To Start Off Alive

It was already a long commute to the heart of the city. But it got even longer.

It was only five minutes after I got on the subway that it happened. Five men got on. And they took over the train. They pulled out guns and that was that. They didn’t look too much different than me. One of the men had a nasty cough. That made us all a little uneasy.

We couldn’t hear what was going on when they started talking with the people in the control room. They could’ve stopped the train if they wanted to. I suppose they didn’t because the terrorists probably threatened to kill people if they did.

About twenty minutes went by and someone else on the train had developed a nasty cough. I must not have noticed it before. Come to think of it, a couple people had the same cough. They all sounded like they’d been smoking ten packs a day for thirty years. Maybe they had been.

I couldn’t explain it, but I didn’t feel tense or scared. At least, not at first. It’s not like terrorism was routine or anything, but I just didn’t feel afraid. And looking around, nobody else really seemed to be scared either. We all were just at peace with the situation somehow.

By half an hour into it, over half the people on the train were coughing. Needless to say, I covered my mouth with my jacket. I doubted it would do much good, but it made me feel better than doing nothing. But even then I hadn’t started worrying. It was ominous for sure, and a little unnerving maybe, but it didn’t actually frighten me. But then something happened. Something that changed everything. And it was then that I started to worry. And it was then that everybody got scared.

Forty-five minutes in, the terrorist with the cough took to the ground. He coughed up some kind of black liquid. That didn’t bode well for the other coughers. The man started to shake violently and fell onto his back. Then his skin started disappearing. He was still alive when his skin had completely dissolved and all you could see was his muscle. Perhaps the most terrifying part was that he wasn’t screaming. Then it got weird.

The black liquid he had coughed up started moving. It inched toward his body and wrapped itself around him like a cocoon. It looked like he was in a body bag. His body stopped moving. For the next five minutes there was complete silence. Nobody even coughed once. They were probably trying to stifle them. Even the terrorists stopped terrorising.

After those five minutes, the cocoon opened up and out stepped less of a man and more of an insect. Or reptile. It was hard to be sure. But it was out of this world, I’ll tell you that much. Maybe it wasn’t out of this world. Maybe just from one of the dark corners. But it was ugly as all hell. It didn’t seem hostile, though. Terrifying, but not threatening. The whatever-it-was looked at his friends – or whatever they were to him now – as if he still recognized them. Then it ripped open the train doors and leaped out.

The biggest question we all had was: How long had he had the cough? Was it days? Hours? Did it start just before he got on the train? The terrorists had the presence of mind to let the control room know what happened. They understood the gravity of the situation.

The government tried to quarantine us, but we all knew it didn’t matter. It was too late. That thing already got out. It would infect others. The battle was already lost. After another few hours, almost everybody on the train was coughing. We were all just waiting for someone else to cough up black stuff. It was the worst waiting game I had ever played.

Another few hours passed. One person started shaking. Then another. Soon half the place was shaking and vomiting black stuff.

Then I coughed.

Back and Forth

The city glowed neon in the nighttime. Maybe it was just my goggles. They made everything look a little funny. Not that everything wasn’t funny. Not “haha” funny. Peculiar funny. The kinda funny where crooks and politicians do things that don’t make a whole lotta sense. But who’s the crook and who’s the politician?

I’d been followin’ this guy for the better part of an hour. Waitin’ for him to slip up. My client had their suspicions, but I knew he was guilty. They always were. My feet kicked up water from the puddles forming from the rain. It was making my socks wet.

The world flickered. Damn goggles. Hadn’t worked right since I got ‘em. But as much as they failed, they also helped me keep track of whoever I was following. It helps in the private investigation business. Made my job easier, that’s for sure. The guy I was followin’ turned and entered a building. Finally.

I turned to follow and the world flickered again. Instead of a door, I found a brick wall. Smacked m’damn nose on it. I stepped back and tried to make sense of it. The world flickered back and I saw the door again. I grabbed the knob and then-

Brick wall. My hand was encased perfectly in brick. This was a helluva conundrum. What the hell was going on? I didn’t see anybody else on the sidewalk.

“Little help!” I called. No reply. Looks like I was stuck. I’d have taken my goggles off if not for fear I’d get stuck in that personless void. I tried the usual. Kick the brick wall. Punch the brick wall with my free, non-dominant hand. Headbutt the brick wall. As usual, nothing. I just had to wait for the flicker.

***

Hours passed. I actually started to think about life and philosophy. I didn’t like it. Thankfully the world flickered back just as I was getting too deep for comfort and I shoved the door open and dashed inside the building. I ripped the goggles off my face and threw ‘em to the ground. Then I went down the stairwell and into whatever dive bar this guy led me to.

I saw him. Sittin’ there like a typical bastard. He gave off the stench of the type-a rat you wouldn’t even let touch the bottom of your shoe. He was chattin’ up some broad. They held hands and I saw the transaction. When they got up and started walkin’ to the door, I got in their way.

“Norton,” I said with my best mean face on. I stepped forward and grabbed his throat.

*flicker*

I held nothing. I stood in the middle of an empty room, losing my balance. I fell flat on my face. My patience was wearing thin. I ran around trying to find a door. I found it and ran out to the empty street. No cars or anything. Weird. Without rhyme or reason I just started running.

*flicker*

I bumped into somebody and we fell to the ground. The back of his head looked familiar. I flipped him over and it was HIM. Norton.

“I caught you, you son of a bitch!” I said. I went to smack his face for the trouble.

*flicker*

My hand flew through the air. I nearly smacked my own self in the face. I just sat down. What was the point?

*flicker*

Somebody’s knee hit my nose, breaking it. They’d been running. They tripped over me. I was in pain, but not showin’ it. I stood up and hailed a taxi, asked him to take me to my office. I was done for the day. Everything was getting a little too crazy for my taste. We made it halfway there, no incident. Then-

*flicker*

I was sailing through the air at a good forty m-p-h. There was no way this was ending well. I flew through the air for a long time. Before I hit the ground-

*flicker*

I landed on an oncoming car and was terrified, the wind nearly blowing my face off. The startled driver stopped the car and it threw me forward. It took a bit to get my head straight. The driver was angry at me, of course. I threw him aside and, uh, commandeered his vehicle. Bless my stars, I made it to my office. I quickly called my client and told her I discovered her husband cheating. I didn’t want any more part of it. There was no telling if it was the case that made these weird things start happening or if it was just a coincidence. I looked out the window. How could I even be sure what was real anymore? Through the window I didn’t see any people. No cars. No lights. No rain. The buildings looked like cardboard boxes. Everything bland and lifeless.

I’m in the other world. Maybe it’s better here. No funny stuff. Everything’s just the way it is.

I’m hungry.

Great Opportunity — Apply Now!

The farther humans expanded into space, the more necessary it became to figure out a timely way to communicate. Advanced technology was still bound by physics; while it was easy to get bit of voice data or text to go very fast, as opposed to a large spacecraft, there was a growing lag between sender and receiver because, often, “very fast” is still too slow.

Even as far back as the 1900s there was a glimmer of hope in the form of a quantum mechanics concept called “quantum entanglement.” Entanglement was a verified phenomenon that some particles were “hitched” at such a core level that something happening to particle A would be reflected by particle B instantaneously.

Not at speed of light, but instantaneously. Regardless of distance.

At least, as far as scientists could confirm. Even 300-odd years later it seemed like there was much unknown in the world of physics. Granted, some of that was doubtlessly due to subtleties so minute that their instruments couldn’t pick them up.

Regardless, quantum entanglement was the proverbial dangling carrot that scientists across the colonized universe were chasing. If entanglement could be harnessed on a larger scale? At the whim of humans? Communication would be revolutionized.

***

Juan almost deleted the email. After all, the subject “GREAT OPPORTUNITY — APPLY NOW!” hardly inspired confidence. Most of his spam contained a lot of false hope. But just as his finger hovered over the delete button, he noticed the email address was sent from was a .gov domain.

It was still probably spam, but .gov emails were important spam. They fell in the category of “good to know” more than “dear Lord did I just get a virus.”

Juan, it started off.
My name is Craig Folstar from the research and development branch of NASA. I have been working with a team of researchers to revolutionize the way we communicate. We have been informed that you are leaving with a research team headed for Pluto.

We have developed a tool that will allow real-time communication with a loved one without lag. However, we need testers, which is where you come in. We’d like you to be one of our early beta testers to make sure our device works in a real situation. If you agree, we’d give you a prototype to use as you wish to communicate with one person on Earth.

Please call me at [redacted] for more info, or fill out the attached form to get started!

Craig Folstar
[Address redacted]

“Huh,” said Juan, scratching his head. He had been stressing out a bit about being away from his wife for so long. Sure, there was email and time-delayed voice messages and video (it typically took between 4 and 4 ½ hours for communications to reach Earth from Pluto and vice-versa), but it wasn’t the same as having an actual conversation.

***

Going on this research trip was the opportunity of a lifetime. He’d been on several smaller trips: Mars, the moon, Venus, but that was practically local. Heck, anything beyond Mars was out of text message range. His boss likened it to the Wild Wild West, where the law was minimal–in large part due to the pain of communicating.

And this was going to be a long trip. Flight speed had increased greatly since the dawn of the 21st Century. At the turn of the century it would take about nine years to reach Pluto from Earth. Fast forward 200 years and that time was reduced to one year. That’s a major improvement.

Yet still one long freakin’ year.

Unlike in the movies, where people are put in stasis for a trip, everyone on the ship would stay awake. As nice as the concept of stasis was for science fiction, reality turned out to be much different; not only had technology failed to safely induce the state of stasis, it had turned out that maintaining stasis cost more in fuel than providing food and amenities for the men.

Thus, no stasis. Every inch of the trip would be experienced by its men.

***

The package was nondescript to the mail carrier. Just another box. Just another delivery. But Juan jittered nervously as he used a utility knife to break the seal. It seemed that such a classified device would be delivered with more security; it was laughably easy to open the box. It could have contained a bunch of books, not the greatest technological breakthrough of the century.

In the box, surrounded by packing peanuts, were two identical devices.

Juan set each on his kitchen table. They were pendulums. The base was circular. Two metal rods about a foot high jutted above the base, with a smaller metal rod connecting them at the top. It was from this horizontal rod that the pendulum hung. The pendulum looked like an inverted teardrop, round at the top, and forming a point. Taped to the side of the pendulum was a bag of sand.

There was also a brochure. Juan opened it and started reading.

How to operate your Distance Communicator.

1. There are two main communication functions provided by the device: physical and verbal.

2. The position of pendulum A will be applied to pendulum B. Tapping one pendulum will cause both to take on the same swing simultaneously.

3. It will also reflect movements that seem to defy gravity–for example, take up one of the pendulums and wrap it around the suspension bar, and the other pendulum will do it without need other physical interaction. At all times the two pendulums will be synchronized.

4. A button on the base of the pendulum activates the ability for the pendulum to transmit and receive sound waves. Due to privacy considerations, both buttons need to be activated to send or receive sounds through the device.

5. As such, signaling via the pendulum that one person wishes to communicate verbally is recommended.

6. Users during our local trials reported that putting sand in the base of each pendulum would allow the pendulum to create designs when swung and would use it as a visual “hi” when one party wasn’t at their pendulum.

7. When sand is in the base, a switch on the side will raise or lower the pendulum; this will be reflected by both pendulums!

Please note that, at this time, there is not a way to send text through the pendulum. Expect the same delays for text and Internet usage that you would normally experience for your journey.

Grabbing one of the pendulums, Juan lifted it. At the same time, the other pendulum raised up. It was heavier than he expected. He moved the pendulum around, dazzled by the way the other pendulum responded without being touched.

“Wow,” he said.

***

As far as NASA researchers could determine, the entanglement process meant that only two objects could be paired. However, each device was outfitted with a transmitter to send daily reports to the development team. No personal information, mind you–just crucial usage reports, diagnostics, and other technical stuff.

In addition, both Juan and his wife would need to fill out a journal about their experiences. Most of the stuff should be in the automatically generated reports, but NASA didn’t mind the duplication. It was important to get feedback from the actual users.

***

By the time Juan had been in space a week, he and his wife had worked out a routine. Give the pendulum a tap. If the other person was around, they’d hit the sound wave button and, as a sign to the other person, they’d hang the pendulum over the support. Then the initiator would hit the sound wave button. If the initial tap wasn’t responded to, well, they’d lower the pendulum and leave a design in the sand.

The deeper into space Juan went he found himself half-expecting the device to not function as advertised. Initial prototypes always have kinks. Always. All the theory in the world can’t create a perfect device the first time around.

But if there were problems, they weren’t reflected on the user side. While the other researchers were severely missing their loved ones, Juan was still feeling a sense of intimacy with his wife. Maybe not physically, but there was a closeness that he’d never before experienced during times of prolonged separation.

***

They’d been on Pluto for four months. Hard months, but productive. Juan still communicated regularly with his wife, although he was so busy that they’d mostly decreased verbal communication to once a day. Instead, they started to keep the pendulum in the sand, tapping it at various points in the day.

“Hi,” communicated the flowery swirls. And, “Thinking of you.” And, “Missing you.” And, “Hope you’re well.” Sometimes they’d layer the designs one on top of the other to create a visual conversation, one without specifically implied meaning, but intelligible nonetheless.

Juan would do paperwork in his room, one eye on his papers, the other on the pendulum. If he saw the pendulum move it’d give him an energetic boost. Just being thought of and watching the pendulum swing in real time–it was good.

***

Back when he was first dating his wife he’d check his cell phone every two seconds to see if he got a text. And then after they’d dated for a while he didn’t check every two seconds, but did keep a section of his brain trained on any movement of that phone.

And as things happen, after several years of marriage, it stopped being important to check the cell during work. If something was important, she’d call his work number. And evenings were spent together. There was no reason to feel tied to a specific communication device.

But now it was different. It was like those dating days where every second could be a second when the pendulum moved. It was like his eyes could only spend a few seconds on his paperwork before drifting up to make sure the pendulum hadn’t started swinging.

It was like a gnat constantly buzzing in his ear. It was kind of fun. And very detrimental to his work productivity. Suddenly, he lived and breathed for every jostle of that pendulum.

***

The pendulum jerked.

Juan looked up, surprised. He’d never seen such a violent action from the pendulum before. But it didn’t stop there. The pendulum started whipping around on its wire, contorting and wrapping itself around the support posts. An extra-violent movement caused the whole thing to tumble off the table.

Ker-thunk.

It skidded along the floor several paces, and then back, each movement seemingly more intense than the last.

And then nothing.

The pendulum lay on its side, as if gasping. Except there was no sound.

“What?” said Juan.

He picked up the pendulum and set it back on the desk. He pushed the soundwave button. “You there, hon?”

Nothing.

He tried tapping the pendulum.

Nothing. It just swung naturally back and forth, like a regular pendulum. Maybe her device broke. NASA wouldn’t like that. He sent her a quick email to see what was up and tried to force his focus back to his paperwork–albeit work interrupted every few minutes so he could tap.

***

First hour: nothing.

Second hour: nothing.

Third hour: nothing.

Aside from overnight, Juan was pretty confident he’d not gone more than two hours without seeing a tap of some kind from her.

Fourth hour: nothing.

Juan tried to get some lunch in his belly, but it tasted like brown Autumn leaves in his mouth.

Fifth hour: nothing.

The clock seemed to be ticking extra slowly.

Sixth hour: nothing.

Juan buried his head in his hands.

***

During that sixth hour that the ship captain received a transmission. This wasn’t uncommon. He usually received one every three minutes, give or take. Various people at NASA had every reason to need to interact with him.

This was not from NASA.

“Da fuck?” he said colloquially.

The transmission contained three websites.

Internet was technically impossible at that distance. With a 4+ hour lag between Earth and Pluto, it would take eight hours just to receive a single web page. So NASA had created a makeshift workaround. A copy of the Internet was contained on their very ship, updated every three days.

Not the whole Internet, mind you. That would take more server space than NASA money could afford, and more physical real estate on the ship than was possible. However, it did cherry-pick the some crucial sites for the men and women: CNN.com, NASA.gov, FOXnews.com, a limited Facebook.com, among others.

Even Netflix was provided, although instead of a web interface it was two movies and five TV episodes handpicked for the NASA personnel. That helped to limit the amount of data being stored on ship.

Pluto’s Internet had just been updated the day before. Yet here were three sites, packaged together like a special delivery, which showed that perhaps once every three days wasn’t frequently enough.

The websites all said one thing: WAR.

***

“Men, the United States has been attacked, heavily. NASA is seriously crippled. Philadelphia has been flattened. San Francisco is on fire. Chicago reeling. Washington DC is rubble. I don’t know that I believe in a first strike deathblow, but what the States received today is pretty damn close.

“A lot of casualties. A whole lot of casualties. Juan,” said the captain, turning, “I’ve gotten a note that your house was hit in the blast. Your wife–” The captain’s voice broke momentarily. “I’m sorry.”

***

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. The words echoed in Juan’s brain over and over like the end of a filmstrip flapping about. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

Juan tapped the pendulum. He stopped it. Tap. Stop. Tap. Stop.

Tap.

Stop.

Fixin’ for Love

CMU-1029 was a hulking, tank-thick medical droid. It lumbered at twelve feet tall, mostly proportional to a human, covered in chipped and scratched white paint. The red cross on its back was taking heavy fire, but it had to protect Rob. The mechanic had taken a shot just above his knee, a projectile meant to damage battle mechs. There was nothing but blood and ripped muscle below the thigh. The two of them were too exposed at the peak of the turret camp.

Rob had repaired 1029 six times in the field, fourteen times in the hangar bay, and provided thirty-two maintenance service checks in the span of fifty-two days. 1029 concluded that Rob had looked over it even before it was self-aware.

It scanned the frozen, yellow cratered terrain. Two hundred and eleven feet down the slope, ninety-one feet left. The medical bot scooped Rob up and ran its course to the best spot of concealment and cover. Most of the ice either exploded or melted around the battlefield, depending on which weapons were being used. 1029’s right leg was creaking loose, but it changed its priorities to keep Rob safe.

It ran behind heavier combat units and their maintenance crews. 1029 saw multiple injuries on the other pilots, but Rob was more important. Not imperative to the battle in any way, but 1029 cared about him. It wasn’t supposed to, but it did.

A heavy projectile slammed into 1029’s side, and as it caught its balance, another shot hit just under its left armpit. The machine forced extra algorithms to regain balance from losing its arm.

1029 slid behind the cover it planned for. Its right knee twisted beyond Rob’s abilities to fix. Even if it felt pain, it would’ve been nothing if Rob died. The scruffy young man rolled out of reach. 1029 crawled through the yellow, ashy snow on its two arms and one good leg. It wished it could talk, just to comfort Rob.

It noticed Rob staring at it. Through the pained expression, 1029 registered confusion. He asked, “What are you doing?”

It crawled on its side until it laid beside Rob. It examined the thick blood trail leading to Rob’s stub.

“I can’t fix you 1029.”

It didn’t care. The machine ran its inventory. The anesthetic tank was ruptured, its cauterizing plate couldn’t heat up to peak performance, and the last of the morphine was in its severed arm.

1029 received an order: RETURN TO FRONT LINE. TWO MECHANICS DOWN. It couldn’t fight its orders. It rolled on its side and sat up. Two GPS dots popped up in its heads-up display.

The white tank rolled forward like a tire until it got to its arm. Rob needs me. 1029 hacked its own programming, and rolled its way back to Rob.

The communications officers off planet tried to override 1029, but it fought back. It sprayed the last of the anesthetic to Rob’s stub, injected another booster shot to fight any alien infections, and rerouted critical battery power to the cauterizing plate.

The officers began to upload a virus to 1029. The machine tore into its severed arm until it found a morphine syringe. The virus took root as the morphine went into Rob. 1029 reached behind its head and tore out its communications router.

Rob’s eyes were starting to close. 1029’s functions were beginning to cripple. Cauterization heat at one hundred degrees Celsius. The robot shoved the hot plate to Rob’s stub, followed by an instant scream.

1029 fought to keep its visual functions. As its limb and diagnostics froze into paralysis, it fought to make sure Rob was okay. The mechanic passed out, but 1029 couldn’t tell if it was from shock, or death.

Everything went black. Rob.

 

 

Posted in: War |

They Are In and Over

The room was pristine, like it had been freshly built and without a grain of dirt ever touching a surface. But this room had been around for nearly a century. The door was like a thin membrane, both existent and non-existent. Jensen stepped into the membrane and for a moment it formed around him and followed him into the room. Then the room made an affirming sound and let him pass through.

Jensen was a middle aged man with a sort of common handsomeness. Although middle aged in Aero had risen to about 130 years old. He wore a very expensive, light colored suit and beige shoes. He walked over to his kitchen counter and put a coffee mug into a machine. It instantly filled his cup with steaming hot coffee, exactly the way he liked it. He walked over to the French doors leading to the deck. The whole house was very open. No small doors between rooms, but big wide openings.

The French doors opened by themselves from the middle. Jensen walked through and stood against the railing, looking out at the sky. The ground was far below, and he saw mostly clouds.

“Jensen, you there?” asked a voice from what looked like a ball bearing inside Jensen’s ear.

“Of course,” Jensen said. “What do you need?”

“I need you to come down.”

“Sure thing, Vic.”

Jensen took a second to breathe in more of the view, then walked back into his house. The door shut behind him. His coffee mug transformed into what looked like more of a travel mug. He passed through the front door membrane once more, this time going out.

***

Jensen entered a bright white control room.

“What’s up?” he said. Vic looked up over at him.

“Not sure yet,” Vic said. “But I thought you should take a look.”

Jensen looked at the instruments and screens. He didn’t seem troubled by anything. “Probably just an earthquake or something.”

“It doesn’t look like one to me,” said Vic.

“They don’t all look the same, Vic.”

“What if they’re coming back?”

“I doubt it. They’ve been down there for a hundred years. We scared them pretty badly. They won’t be back.”

“Alright, Jensen. You’re the boss.”

Jensen walked out into the corridor. It was just a small walkway from one floating building to another. He breathed in the fresh air and strolled to his favorite restaurant. He ordered a perfect steak. Cooked perfectly.

***

Back in the control room, Vic stared at the monitors. After careful consideration, he mentally dialed the Organizer.

“Deora, you there?” he said.

“I’m here,” she said. “What do you need?”

“I need you to come look at something.”

“Down in a minute.” Hayley looked at him from her chair.

“Don’t trust Jensen’s analysis?” Hayley asked playfully. Vic looked at her.

“I’d just like a second opinion.” He paused. “But no, I’m not convinced so easily. He underestimates them.”

Shortly after, Deora arrived.

“Take a look at this and tell me what you think it is.” Deora walked gracefully over to the monitor and stared at it for a few seconds, studying it.

“Could be some kind of volcano,” she said.

“May I propose another possibility?”

“Of course.”

“What if they’re coming back up?”

“I doubt it. But I suppose anything’s possible. Just keep an eye on it.”

“What should I do if it is them?”

“Lookup the protocols. They’ve been in place since the beginning.”

***

Jensen arrived back at his house and went straight out to the balcony to finish what he’d started earlier. A fresh cup of coffee sat in his hand as he admired the scenery. His attention was drawn to something coming towards him from the ground. Flying towards the city. He adjusted his eyes and zoomed in about 400 percent. It was a person on a flyer. It was a girl, and she didn’t look like she was from Aero.

“Vic?” he asked.

“I’m here,” said Vic coldly through the earpiece.

“You seeing this?”

“Yeah, I’m seeing it.” Vic was clearly annoyed.

“Sorry, Vic. I’ll be down.”

Jensen bolted out of the house and out into the city. Down the walkways and back into the control room. Vic shot him a dirty look when he came in.

“What do we do, boss?” Vic asked.

“Charge the cannons,” Jensen said. “She can’t get through the shield anyway, but better to be safe than sorry.”

“She?” Vic said, puzzled.

“He must not have seen it, Vic,” Hayley said.

“Seen what? What the hell are you talking about?” Jensen said.

Vic showed him. He displayed on the monitors the view of the ground. There were millions of people in a swarm heading for Aero. Jensen was shell shocked.

“Looks like those illusions didn’t work,” Vic said. “Guess they got tired of it down there and figured we were full of it. What do we do now, Jensen? It’s your call.”

“Just fire everything we have. These bastards are going back underground one way or another.”

***

The flyer was simple enough to control. It was specifically designed so that anybody could use it. Petra wasn’t some cavewoman who didn’t know how to do anything, despite the fact that she’d lived underground all her life. There was technology down there. And it was easy enough to see the big red start button and pull the flyer in whatever direction you wanted to go. Push forward on the handlebars and you go forward. Pull back, you slow down. It took her a bit to get the hang of it, but after a while she was able to maneuver it well enough.

But there was only one flyer. At least that she could see. And the mass of people following her had to just run along on the ground in the direction she was headed. But the swarm was in the millions. They weren’t sure what they were going to do once they reached the floating city, but they knew that’s where the battle was. Petra didn’t even know what she would do.

Petra was getting closer. She was almost there. She felt the surge of adrenaline pumping through her veins. Then, just as she was within a couple hundred yards, she saw two things. A gigantic cannon swivelled in her direction and just sat there, aiming at her. Following her. The other thing she saw was a shimmer. Like the glare on a pair of glasses. She couldn’t exactly see it, but something was surrounding the city. Like a bubble. Maybe a glass dome. When she reached the edge of the bubble, she leapt off her flyer and landed on the surface of the shield. She was running before she hit the ground and kept running along the shield. Her bike exploded when it came in contact.

It must’ve looked funny to people below. Seeing somebody running in the air above them. She didn’t want to look down, but when she did, Petra noticed the cannon still following her every movement.

The swarm below reached Aero and just stood amassed underneath, looking up, wondering what to do. That’s when a light started to glow and a humming noise started so low they couldn’t even hear it at first.

As Petra was running, the shield gave out and she started falling. She almost panicked, but instead became resourceful and slowed her fall with a nearby building. Her feet landed on the side of the building and she started running down it. As she approached the ground, she stopped running and grabbed onto a protruding ledge. The rest of the descent was accomplished by jumping from one ledge to another. She landed on the ground and reality kicked in.

The buildings were strange. They all looked the same. She had no way of discerning any importance from one to another. She looked around for the cannon. When her eyes caught it it started to glow and hum.

***

Jensen watched Petra from the control room, his arms crossed.

“What’s the charge?” he asked the room.

“Eighty percent,” someone said. Jensen paced around a bit. Not worried, but annoyed.

“Whenever it’s ready, fire.”

Eighty-five percent. Ninety percent. Ninety-five percent. Then the technician made a swiping motion on the screen.

Jensen watched the ground monitor. There were millions of people. And then there weren’t. In a flash there was dust. He turned to the monitor of Petra. In mid step her body turned black, then blew away into the air.

“Poor bastards didn’t stand a chance,” Vic said. “Why didn’t we just do that in the first place?”

“Because we thought they’d be happy underground,” Jensen replied. “We wanted them to be happy. But they lived in a different world. They couldn’t join us in the sky.”

“Well sir, you just committed mass murder. How do you feel?”

“It was extinction. They’re pests that brought this on themselves.”

Jensen turned and walked out. Vic looked at the screens for a moment, then turned them off.

“That wasn’t the protocol, Vic,” Deora said in Vic’s earpiece.

“I know,” Vic replied. “Take it up with Jensen.”

The God’s Gun

 “When I first laid eyes on him, I knew that men would not only follow him into hell, they would go ahead to announce his coming.” – The Coming of the Gun of Dawn by Counsel Scribe Sara Brezal.

 

The God’s Gun

Grey Robak sat at table by himself in the corner of a poorly lit bar sipping his whiskey. Whiskey, he had never had the drink until now, and he found that he didn’t much care for it. The beverage was warm, bit the tongue, and did nothing for his thirst – which was becoming quite powerful. They had nothing like whiskey on his home planet, nothing like it in the entire Emperiom. Wines and juices were common, but not this devilish drink.

This was his first time away from Emperiom space, and the farthest any Mage had come into Guild territory. This might have been a honor to some but not to Robak. “Blast them,” he thought to himself. “I’m a scholar, not a field man.” And the ridiculous orders they gave. “Go to the planet Trinight and look for anything unusual.”

Everything was unusual on this space forsaken planet. He looked up from his drink and surveyed the saloon around him. The first thing that struck him as unusual was the amount of wood used to build this place. Other than the spaceport, which was Guild constructed of course, he had seen no sign of steel, plastic, or gold of any kind. Tables, chairs – even the sorry excuse for a door – were made of wood. The only trace of metal he could see was the gold coins stacked in front of each man at the bar to pay for their drinks. That was another oddity. “They trade in gold,” Robak thought to himself. Not Space Guild credits but gold. The last thing he couldn’t get used to was how these people dressed. Blue denim and light shirts that button down the front with dark leather boots and wide brimmed hats, not the flowing robes or tight tunics of the royal houses. Robak felt very out of place in his apprentice robe with counsel emblem embroidered on the breast.

He was considering a change in garb when suddenly an obviously drunken man stumbled into the saloon and shouted, “Morris, you get me a drink, and not that horse spit you normally serve. You get me the good stuff!”

The bartender stopped polishing the bar and grabbed the same bottle he had used to pour every other drink. He looked at the young man and quietly asked, “Brooks, ain’t you think you’ve had enough already?”

“Hell, I’ll have enough when I had enough!” Brooks shouted.

Morris poured the drink and responded, “All right, all right, I ain’t your momma. Just don’t need to be carrying you home tonight is all.”

“Ain’t goin’ home tonight,” Brooks shouted, “Ain’t ever goin’ home again! I’m hitting all the stops, then I’m heading to New Pump city and catching me a smuggler ship off planet!”

If the news of the man’s plan to leave shocked anyone, there was no sign of it. The bartender just spat into a glass and wiped it with a dirty rag.

“What are you going to do off planet?” Morris asked with an inflection that showed he didn’t much care what the answer was.

“Beats me” Brooks replied, “Maybe I’ll join the smugglers or see the inner worlds, you ever been to the inner worlds, Morris?”

Morris looked up, “With spacer guild prices what they are, I ain’t never even been off planet. Likely never will.”

“That much is at least true,” thought Robak. The price the Mage Counsel had paid to ship him to this world was staggering, several times his year allowance for certain.

“Besides, why would you want to leave Trinight?” Brooks said softly.

“There’s a bounty hunter comin’ to town.”

“Well, that ain’t nothing new.”

“Not just any bounty hunter, they say it’s the God’s Gun.”

At that, the few men sitting at the bar erupted into laughter. Brooks looked savagely at the men mocking him and downed his drink.

“Ain’t no such man as the God’s Gun,” laughed Morris.

“There’s thems that laugh, and then there’s thems that know better,” Brooks replied. “I talked to a smuggler last night who says he saw him. They say he destroys whole towns looking for his bounty, leaves no man alive.”

“Well,” said Morris, wiping tears from his eyes. “It ain’t like you got a price on your head.”

“Still,” Brooks replied. “You darsn’t stand in front of a bull when he’s chargin’.” Brooks, who was now visibly having trouble standing up, looked around the bar and shouted, “But there’s no way he’s here today so let’s celebrate! Who wants to buy their old pal Brooks a drink?”

The men at the bar retreated to their glasses not seeming to want to provide any more whiskey for Brooks. Undismayed, Brooks stumbled in to a man at the corner of the bar that Robak had not noticed before. That, in and of itself, was a surprise as Robak prided himself on being observant. After all, that was why he was chosen for this mission. The Strange Man was finely dressed in a dark wool jacket and white pressed shirt with sliver cufflinks glittering at his wrists. A black, wide brimmed hat hid is face from Robak. Despite his appearance, he seemed to stay in the shadows and go relativity unnoticed until now.

Brooks looked drunkenly at the strange man and said, “I don’t know you. Why don’t we get acquainted over a drink?”

The man did not respond, only looked at his own drink in his hand, not even showing any sign of hearing the drunkard.

Brooks grew impatient, “Come on! A man in such fancy duds as you could buy the whole town a drink, I’m just looking for one.”

Still no response.

Brooks’s face grew dark. “Too good to drink with me, eh? I see, maybe I should cut you up a bit and take your fine duds. Leave this planet looking like a gentleman.”

With that, Brooks produced a small blade from a sheath at this hip, brandishing it toward the stranger.

At that moment, the stranger – moving faster then Robak would have thought possible – grabbed Brooks’s arm and wrenched it behind his back.

Brooks started to yell, “Hey mister, I was only fooling around, let me go!”

The man, still holding his drink with his right hand sighed, saying to everyone and no one at once, “All I wanted was a simple drink.” He pulled up harder on Brooks’s arm forcing him to drop the knife. Brooks started screaming, “He’s breaking my arm!”

The bartender, who had dropped to the floor thinking to avoid any gunfire, now emerged from the bar with a shotgun aimed at the stranger. “Just put that old alky down now. We don’t want no trouble.”

The stranger turned to look at the bartender and slowly consumed his drink in one long sip, then placed it on the table. “Then you will have no trouble.”

The stranger stood up quickly dislocating Brooks’s shoulder from it socket, causing him to collapse unconscious from pain. Dropping Brooks to the floor the man pulled a single gold piece from a vest pocket and placed it on the bar. Touching the front of his hat brim in a departing gesture, he strode slowly out of the saloon.

Grey Robak sat dumbfounded. Never in his years had he seen anything like this, never heard of anything like this. In a world of curiosities, this man was the most curious thing he had ever witnessed. The other bar patrons must have felt the same as they all started to get up and follow the stranger out in to the street. The stranger was walking calmly to the other side of the dirt lane when suddenly a voice bellowed out, “Eli Warren!”

The stranger stopped mid stride.

A man stood about 25 yards down the road, his leather duster pulled back at the hips, revealing two crisscrossed gun belts and two silver gun handles shining in the sunlight.

“Eli Warren!” The man shouted again, causing the stranger face him and for the first time, Robak could see his face clearly. He saw an older man of some 40 years, his features hard and unforgiving. His face was clean shaven except for a dark heavy mustache. The hair that stuck out from below his hat was black with hints of gray at the temples, but the most striking thing about him was his eyes, dark, almost red. His eyes were fierce, as if they missed nothing.

Again the man called, “Eli Warren! Three times, I call your name, now you must answer!”

The stranger called Eli said in a low automatic tone, “Who calls me?”

“My name is Demon’s Hand, and I am the third God’s Gun. I have come to end your life.”

Eli stood in the street making no movement, no attempt to ready himself for a fight, arms held loosely at his sides.

Demon’s Hand suddenly shouted, “Fill your hands old man, Death comes a reapin’!” With that, the Demon’s Hand pulled his guns and let loose a furry of bullets toward Eli. Eli dove, rolling behind a rain barrel and produced his own gun, a black revolver. There he waited till the gun fire stopped and calmly shouted back, “There’s still time to walk away.” A shot landing near his boot was the only answer. “Then that’s how it will be,” he said. Eli pulled back on the hammer of his pistol and brought it ceremoniously to his forehead. He muttered something inaudible and sprang from cover.

He was met with a barrage of gunfire as he ran but not a single shot seemed to find its place. He rolled, turned, came to one knee and fired. The shot landed in the chest just above the target’s heart. The Demon’s Hand went to his knees, dropping the guns at his side, and slumped backward. Eli stood, placed his hat back on his head, and walked over to his fallen foe.

Grey Robak watched in awe as Demon’s Hand motioned Eli down to him. Eli knelt, listened to the man as he lay dying. After only a moment Eli stood, holstered his gun, dropped two gold pieces on the dead mans chest, and began walking out of town.

(f)irst

This couldn’t be any more of a cliché. She came to me. Lit cigarette. Asking if I could “take care of something” for her.

We met in a dimly lit bar. Hazy smoke permeated the air. A whiskey sour for myself, nothing for the dame.

“So, is this your first job?”

Lying, “No, my hands are stained red already. This is just another name for the list.”

Actually, that wasn’t a lie. Killing had become second nature for me at this point. This, however, was my first assassination. It all felt the same either way.

“Who am I going after?” as my drink is set down. The waitress gives me a wink and tells me it is on the house. Her compliments.

“Oh, you know, the typical revenge story. Ex-husband. Cheated on me for a younger girl.”

“That’s it? Nothing more. Just a cheating husband? You’re not telling me the whole story.”

“No, but do you really care?” she asked already knowing I didn’t.

“Yes.”

“A cheating husband with a lot of my money. My money that can not be collected until he is dead. Of course, he doesn’t know that I know. They left a hotel the other evening. Same old story.”

Same old fucking clichés. Whatever, I could care less. This broken world has led me to this. My left eye was acting up again and repairing biometrics was not cheap. Thankfully, my right arm is still fully functional. Something got knocked loose the other day when I was trying to get information. The information had more back up than anticipated.

“Information. I need more than just ‘he’s a cheating husband’ if I am to take care of this problem. Also, our agreement for an upfront.”

Sliding a hand under a table, I feel something graze my leg. Then a little further. Taking my payment, I push her hand away.

“You’re still a married woman.”

“Not for long hopefully.”

A napkin with an address and a photo in the folds.

Double-checking the payment. Fifty thousand credits. Good.

“I’ll contact you when it is done.”

A day or two, hell, it could have been a week pass. Lying in wait, I finally see them. Waiting ’til the mistress made her way, I casually walk towards the hotel. Hood down. Eyes forward.

“Excuse me sir,” holding out a styrofoam cup. “Any spare change?”

Digging through his pockets, his eyes aren’t on me. I make my move.

“Don’t move and this will be quick.” I pull D.T. against his stomach.

“She hired you didn’t she? Well, I will dou-” the blunt edge of my dagger hidden in my sleeve slams against his skull.

“It’s done. ”

***

Grabbing his hotel key, I carry his body back to the room and wait.

“Where is he!? Let me see the bastard!”

“Calm down, he is right here.”

“I thought you said it was ‘done.'”

“It is, I figured you wanted to witness the final blow,” as I load D.T..

“Let me do it.”

“Show me the money first.”

Slowly, she pulls the other half of my payment out. Good. Pulling the trigger, she drops to her knees bleeding. Slapping the husband awake, I mutter, “Wake up fucker, where is my money?”

“It is in my pocket.”

My hand furiously grabs it and looks at the credits on the screen. Two hundred thousand. This will do.

“You double-crossed me!? Why?!”

Spinning the chamber, I seat myself, putting the silencer on D.T..

“I didn’t double-cross anyone,” as I place the barrel against his head. “I was simply doing a job.”

The chamber slides and the hammer clicks. He drops. Looking at her as she is slowly bleeding. My eyes look up from beneath the hood.

“I hate clichés. But, money talks so loudly, that it is deafening. Also, neither of you have anything I need. No information, just money. Also, you’ve seen and heard enough of me that if you chose to, I would be put away tomorrow. I didn’t get this far by not covering my tracks. Plus, you’re no better than he is. ‘Loving’ him for his money. You’re fucking pathetic.”

The chamber makes one final revolution.

“Q?”

“Yes, F?”

“Make an appointment. Tell Doc, I’ll be there tomorrow. Then we leave.”

Before I leave, I search both of them. There is a note in the coat pocket. ‘Kill him after the payment. He is on our trail.’

He knew?

“Q, we leave tonight. Call Doc, tell him to get me in now. I have the money. Just, we need to leave tonight.”

End of a Cycle

Henry cranked his tiny flashlight in panic. The hell was that? Clutching to a pillar in the dark, the naked man turned the flashlight back on. The light shined on a naked corpse. The body looked just like Henry, pale, blonde, but no bellybutton. He didn’t want to, but he felt for his own, and couldn’t find it. What is this?

Shuffling footsteps on the smooth concrete echoed in the dark. Henry turned the light in time to see himself, charging with a metal baseball bat. Henry held out his hand, “Wait!”

***

Henry cringed from the sound the bat made against the other man’s skull. Henry’s eyes adjusted from the blinding flashlight. He knelt down and took it from his dead victim. Poor bastard just got here.

Henry shined the other Henry’s flashlight around. Yet another clone lay a few feet from the victim. Am I getting closer? Henry looked around the second body. This clone cut his wrists with a shaving razor. Bastard.

The flashlight did little to comfort Henry. Without it, his senses focused in every direction. He had killed four other clones in self defense. It seemed their creator gave a few clones just enough food to keep a few alive. Just enough to kill for.

He decided to keep the flashlight, but turned it off. The others he used were full of dead batteries now. The aluminum bat floated ahead like a blind man’s cane, but he dare not tap the ground and attract more attention.

Sharp smells stung his nose. What is that? He readied his bat in one hand, and turned on the flashlight with the other. One clone was hunched over a dead one. Shit! Henry turned the light back off, but the clone still fired a shot from a shiny little pistol.

Must’ve smelt the gunpowder. Henry took a knee. The clone had shot him in the gut. Through the deafening ring, Henry made out faint footsteps approaching. His grip on the bat was loosening. “You know we’re clones right?”

***

“Yep.”

Henry had snuck his way behind the clone with the flashlight. Immediately after answering, he pushed the gun to the back of the other Henry’s head and pulled the trigger. He thought to himself, You know we get a food drop after ten kills?

Henry’s gut was in knots. Even if their creator followed through with her promise, Henry wouldn’t be hungry. Something pinched his neck. By the time he reached for it, everything went black.

Warmth and light woke Henry up. Dizziness slowly faded as he looked around the red room. He was wearing khakis, shoes, and a black polo shirt. Henry knew this was the first time his body wore clothes, but it felt like something he was used to.

Mindy sat on the other end of a six foot dinning table. There were no windows except for a skylight. The sun was at high noon, but the window was fogged over.

His nose forced him back to the table. Smoked barbecue ribs, corn on the cob smothered in butter, and red skinned mashed potatoes sat on a single plate. Inside a rolled white napkin was a spoon, fork, and steak knife. Mindy was already eating from her own dish. She was still beautiful, but older than Henry remembered. Her dark hair had strands of gray. Wrinkles formed at the edges of her mouth and eyes. She used to be younger than Henry, but she still fit the yellow sundress she wore when they first met.

She pointed to the food. “Eat up. You got to number ten.”

The food smelled great, but his stomach couldn’t handle it. “Why?”

“You tell me. Why did you mercilessly kill yourself ten times?”

Henry just stared.

Mindy tilted her head from side to side with a slight grin. “I know what you mean, but that doesn’t mean you get an answer.”

Henry unwrapped his silverware and grabbed the steak knife. “Why?”

“Oh, so scary.”

Henry jumped from his seat and ran across the table. Mindy calmly swallowed some potato soup, before Henry stabbed her six times. Three in the chest, one in the neck, and two in the face.

Henry caught his breath as he pushed himself away from the bloody mess. A door opened from behind Henry’s chair. He snapped his attention to another Mindy. She shot him.

***

Henry looked down at his khakis, shoes, and blue polo shirt. Twenty kills got him back to the red room. He savored every bite of his barbecue ribs. Mindy entered from the door behind him.

“Sorry dear, I had another one try to kill me again.”

He kept a straight face. “When will they learn?”

Mindy chuckled as she took her seat. “So tell me Henry, how are the ribs?”

“Even better the second time.”

Mindy rested her chin in her fist. “Henry, just tell me.”

Henry kept his eyes closed, and his mouth chewing. After taking his time to swallow, he replied, “Why?”

“Because I want to hear it.”

Henry smirked to the side and shook his head. “Because you think I deserve this. You think this is the worst punishment you can give me. And it’s pretty close Min.”

Mindy smiled even wider and leaned in. “Oh? I’m not doing good enough?”

“No.”

Mindy propped her pistol on the table. Henry didn’t flinch. She cocked the hammer, but he still didn’t react. “Even if I kill you now? And you’re the only one that makes it this far? You’re okay with it all?”

“Mindy, we both know I’m not the only one that’s made it to twenty kills.”

She stopped smiling. “What? How could you know that?”

“We’re getting stronger, Min. Or, maybe your programming is getting weaker. Some of us can fight the urge to kill on sight now,” he chuckled between bites. “On sight. Like we can see a damn thing down there.”

Mindy fired a shot just above Henry’s head. “No! You don’t get to win!”

Henry took his time with his ribs. “Looks like I can.”

Mindy walked around the table and put the gun to Henry’s head. “I am going to watch you die for the rest of eternity. You don’t win.”

Henry pushed the chair backwards, Mindy pulled the trigger in panic. He twisted Mindy to the floor and put the gun under her chin. Another Mindy burst through the only door in the room, but Henry shot her three times before she could see him under the table. He scampered across the floor and carefully exited to the outside light.

***

Bearded Henry laid on the couch with Mindy in his arms, wearing their after-work clothes. The white living room looked sterile except for a brown throw rug under a glass and metal coffee table. The couple watched a special about black market organs.

Henry shook his head. “Why are people still stealing organs?”

“Not everyone can afford to clone their own tissue Henry.”

“I guess.”

Ding dong. Mindy started to get up, but Henry shot up past her. “Too slow.”

Mindy rolled her eyes with a smile and laid back down. “Want me to pause it?”

Henry was already opening the front door. “Let it play.”

Beneath the setting sun, a gun barrel stared at Henry. But he was more shocked to see himself holding the gun. Before he could ask, the clone said, “Pull up your shirt.”

Confused and horrified, Henry pulled his shirt past his belly button.

“Okay. Where’s Mindy?”

“What’s happening here?”

The clone pushed Henry into the house; to the kitchen floor.

“Stop! Wait!”

The clone dragged Henry into the living room. Mindy went for a nightstand, but the clone shot at it. Mindy dropped back into the couch, and the clone threw Henry on top of her. “How could you do this to me?!”

Henry shielded Mindy behind his back, “Do what to you?!”

The clone circled around to the nightstand, keeping his gun on Mindy. “Guess she didn’t tell you Henry. You’ve been cloned. A lot.” He reached under the nightstand and took out the hidden gun.

Henry kept in front of Mindy;  his eyes on the clone. “What’s he talking about?”

She started crying, “He wasn’t supposed to get out.”

Henry got up and backed away from her. “The hell were you cloning me for, Min?!”

The clone answered for her, “She made a bunch of us, with the added incentive to kill each other. Probably stole some bio-engineering tools from work for extra brainwashing.”

Mindy yelled at the two of them, “You think that’s any worse than what you did?” She focused on the younger clone. “I just found out he was cloning random women for his own personal sex dolls. Guess what happened to them when he was finished.”

Henry tried to fix it, “No babe! They were just cloned for their organs! They were gonna kill them anyway!”

The clone put the gun to Henry’s head, “Tell me that’s a lie. I wouldn’t do that.”

Henry gritted his teeth, “Bullshit. You are me! Just a few years behind by the look of it.” He turned back to Mindy, “So how long ago did you start copying me for Thunderdome?”

The clone pushed the barrel against Henry’s head, and aimed the other at Mindy. “Clones aren’t playthings! We both… all… You two took an oath! To treat clones like normal people!” They both begged, but the clone said, “How does it feel?” He pulled both triggers.

The Lazy Blink

Light flickered in the laboratory, the cold fluorescents illuminating a metal table.

“Do, do do, do,” sang Brils under his breath. “BANG, BANG, BANG!” he said, not under his breath. He shimmied around the table, grabbing his scalpel, “Pirate skulls and bones,” he sang, “Mmm, mmm, mmm, weed and bones.”

He wielding the scalpel, maneuvering with deft flicks of his wrist. Blood started spurting onto his labcoat. And more blood. He reached for thread and a needle, humming the whole time.

“LETHAL POISON IN THEIR SYSTEM!” he shouted, almost in tune, and hit the “off” button on his CD player.

He stared at the table. “Welcome to your new life, Mittens.” Brils suppressed a chuckle, but not his lopsided smile.

***

“Ok, it’s simple,” said John, trying to remember the instructions given that Brils gave to him. “We, um, put the cat in the building. We’ll see what the cat sees on our computer monitor. When the cat sees what we want to blast, we push the red button.”

“Will the mods to the cat set off metal detectors?” asked Perry.

“Uh, I didn’t ask.”

“Well, is there metal in its doohickey?”

“Probably! I mean, what do you want me to say? Brils didn’t specify.”

“So we have to get the cat in and past the metal detector.”

“I guess, although I did tell Brils our plan–”

“What do you mean you told Brils? That is need to know information! And the only two people on this planet who need to know are you and I.”

“Well, I mean, I thought it would be helpful for the construction…”

“No matter. That just makes Brils as culpable as anyone. If the shit hits the fan, we can frame him as the mastermind.”

“Yes! A framery!” shouted John, pumping his fist.

“You are an absurd person, did you know that? Now, let’s reconfigure our plans to get the cat past the metal detector.”

***

The unmarked white van was parked a half-a-block away from their target. It was rather dark in the van, even though it was midday. Perry held a flashlight under his chin and John pointed his cell phone at him.

“Are, are you recording? Good. Ok. The government has been dicking around with us, the people, for way too long. It’s time to bring the whole thing down. By the time you see this it will be too late; the revolution will have started and society as we know it will become transformed, like a butterfly breaking out of a cocoon because, like, once it was in the cocoon, but not as a butterfly, but as a caterpillar, and the cocoon, which the caterpillar spun itself, transformed it into a butterfly.”

John gave a thumbs-up sign and uploaded the video to YouTube.

“Alright, Johnny-boy,” said Perry. “We are at the point of no return.”

John crawled out of the van, Mittens in a basket. He was wearing all black, including a handkerchief over his face. He was also wearing yellow gloves because there was a sale at Michaels and they were out of black.

Several pedestrians stared until he ducked behind some shrubs and made his way to the back of the building. The male restroom window was propped open with a stick: his handiwork from earlier in the day.

“Ok, Mittens. You know what to do!” He slipped the cat into the building, looked around him to make sure he wasn’t seen, and sprinted back to the van, anticipating the screams at any moment. Foot, pavement, foot, pavement, foot, pavement, until he dove into the van.

“Did she find Mayor Horton’s office yet?” he asked panting, squinting, trying to see the computer screen with the sweat on his brow.

Perry said nothing.

John wiped his brow, using his shirt to clear sweat away from his eyes. He blinked.

“Why’s the screen black?”

“Well,” said Perry, suppressed rage coloring his tone, “I’m pretty sure Mittens took two steps into the room and then curled up and started taking a nap.”

“Eh?” John looked closer at the screen and realized it wasn’t pitch black. It was a similar reddish darkness to whenever he’d close his eyes during class. “What do you know. A nap. You want me to go back and wake her up? Give her a caffeine tablet?”

Perry tapped his finger a few seconds, and then a few more seconds. “No, no. You said the lasers Brils installed in her eyes were powerful, right?”

“As powerful as they get, sure.”

“We may have to push the red button and hope its strong enough to annihilate the target from where she is.” Perry shrugged. “Could work.”

***

This was a superbly dumb idea from the outset. And Perry’s little fix to the cat’s sleep problem was even dumber. There is no way it should have worked. None of this should have worked. No one should have cooked up their idea. No one should have agreed to take a cat and replace its eye with a laser. And certainly no one should have made a laser as absurdly strong as Brils made Mittens’s lasers.

The moment Mittens flopped on her back (lazily blinking in the process), Perry hit the red button.

Everything happened so quickly. Lasers move at the speed of light, or 186,000 miles per second. A second after Perry hit the button, the laser beam was already two-thirds of the distance to the moon. Within that second, many things happened:

1. Big, red beams shot out of the confused Mittens’s face.
2. They hit the ceiling of the restroom, immediately bursting it.
3. The beam continued upward, shattering every room directly above, including the Mayor’s office.
4. The building structure become completely compromised and collapsed.
5. In order to avoid the falling debris, Mittens began swinging her head back and forth, redirecting the beam into multiple directions.
6. These beams destroyed everything within reach, including: nearby houses, trees, people, and pets, not to mention two birds unlucky enough to be caught in their path.

***

Chaos.

Rubble.

Screams.

Life slowing down as emergency personnel race toward the scene.

Ash and debris hung in the air.

John was found curled in the corner of the van, shaking. Perry had disappeared. A part of the van roof was gone.

It didn’t take authorities long to peg the van as suspicious. Let’s just say the amount of evidence within was ample.

Reporters everywhere. FOX. CNN. Channel 8. That guy with the nasally voice you always hated. That girl who speaks with a perfect Hollywood voice. The new guy who has a southern accent and no one trusts. All elbow-to-elbow for their respective stations, trying to get the scoop, trying to flag police officers or firefighters or anyone to give an account of what happened.

And as John was pulled out of the van, cuffed, and thrown into a police cruiser, those same reporters shouted questions at him.

***

“Why’d you target the, uh, Delta mayor’s office?” asked the agent.

“To make a political statement.”

“In Delta? Uh, ok. So you took the cat around back? Why didn’t you go through the front door?”

“Because we needed to get her past the metal detector. I went in earlier in the day to prop the bathroom window.”

“And you didn’t notice that there was no metal detector?”

“I didn’t.” John looked confused. “I didn’t even think about that. There wasn’t a metal detector?”

“Nope,” said the agent, pinching his nose. “Ok, so you let the cat in and your partner hit the button.”

“Yeah, but Mittens didn’t go to the mayor’s office.”

The agent blinked at John. “Didn’t go to the mayor’s office?”

“Yeah, Mittens was supposed to go out of the bathroom, down the hall, to the elevator, and find the mayor.”

“To the elevator. John, how was a cat going to push the button?”

“Oh.”

“Well, we found poor Mittens alive and scared under a whole lot of rubble.” The agent sighed. “This is the weirdest fucking case I’ve seen. Honestly.”

***

“Hello?” said Brils, holding his cell phone.

“I hear you’re the guy to come to with weapon surgery needs.”

“Perhaps. You tell me what you want, you send me half up front, I deliver. You pay the other half on pick up.”

Fifteen minutes later Brils closed his phone, an odd little smile playing his lips. He hit play on his CD player.

“You feel so heavy, you just can’t stop it,” he sang. “this sea of madness turns you into stone.” Brils hummed a few words he didn’t know. “Shoots like a rocket, all the time.”

Brils hummed and checked his PayPal account.

Dig

They dug for almost a century. Burrowing deeper and deeper into the mantle of the Earth. They needed to be close to the core. But more importantly, they needed to be away from the crust. Millions of people were driven underground. The ones that managed to survive. They were forced to form a new society.

“Sir, we’ve hit a wall,” said Dawn.

“Mark it,” said Leon. “Start digging in another direction. Are all the pillars holding?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check them?”

“Not all of them. The ones I’ve checked show no stress.”

“Good.” Leon swiped his hand across his forehead. “Can you get Hans for me?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks.” Dawn exited the room, which resembled an office.

It was rough and looked like it had been carved out of a rock. The door was also rock and opened like a sliding glass door that receded into the wall. Leon sat at a desk, also carved from the rock. It was connected to the floor and had three sides that came up and a flat top. As flat as crudely carved rock can be. The chair he sat on was also was carved from rock. Though it was hollowed out as much as possible to make for easy lifting. He also had a bed. But it didn’t look comfortable at all. Nothing looked comfortable. Nothing was comfortable.

Hans walked down the corridor leading to Leon’s office. Fitting with the theme of the place, it was uncomfortably narrow. To fit two people through you’d have to walk sideways. But it had to be this way. Anything to make less digging. There were many rooms along this hallway. All dealing with what little regulation they had in this new colony.

Hans took a deep breath and looked at the chiseled name “Leon” on the door, then entered. He said nothing when he came in and Leon looked up at him.

“How’s the food doing?” Leon asked.

“It’s okay for now.” Hans looked a little sheepish.

“But?”

“But it won’t be for long.”

“We’ve lasted the better part of a century down here. What’s gone wrong?”

“It’s a little hard to grow things underground. In rock. With no sun. And no resources. We made preparations, but we can’t last forever unless somebody makes some kind of major invention.”

Leon sighed. “I don’t know what to do.”

“There’s not really much you can do,” Hans said frankly. “We’re screwed.”

***

Petra swung her crude tool at the rock. Ever hollowing it out for the millions of people that had to live there. She was one of many diggers. Time came to quit and she put down her rock hammer. Not quite the rock hammer you might be used to. This was more along the lines of a sledgehammer. Her earpiece had been going bad for a long time now. Sometimes it would cut out, sometimes it would get different transmissions at the same time. She heard “quitting time” clear enough, but then it started fizzling and she heard a bunch of different conversations at once. As she was about to take out the earpiece, she heard something that made her stop dead in her tracks. She heard How..food doing? *fizzle* then silence. Then a bunch of other transmissions trying to fight for attention. Then We’re screwed. *fizzle*

How she picked up the transmission was unclear to her. She didn’t know exactly who was talking. It sounded like the Organizer, but she couldn’t be sure. She ran up to another digger and asked, “Did you hear anything about a food shortage?”

Her new friend blinked at her. “Food shortage? What the hell are you talking about?”

Petra looked closely at the other girl’s earpiece.

“Get away from me!” The girl cried, smacking Petra in the arm.

“Is your earpiece working?”

“Yeah, it works just fine.”

“It doesn’t intercept other transmissions?”

“No. Don’t walk so close to me.”

Petra walked away and decided to let it go. She was surprised to find later that day that everybody was talking about the food shortage.

***

“How did this get out?” asked Leon, slouched back in his chair. Hans just stood there, hands folded in front of him.

“The only two people who know about it are you and me,” Hans said.

“Apparently not.” Leon gave him a cold stare.

“Before talking with you, I told nobody. After our talk, I said nothing more about it.”

“Well put an end to it. The last thing we need is a panic.”

***

As Petra was eating the bowl of mush that passed for food her earpiece began to crackle. How…get out? she heard. She pounded on her earpiece. Only…people..know about it…you and me. She stopped and listened. Put an end to it.

She realized what she heard must have been true. They’re running low on food. And they’re keeping it secret. A righteous fury overtook her. She was part of the working class stiffs that hacked away at the rock every day. And they were sitting in their uncomfortable chairs with no clue what to do about anything. She didn’t want to be them. There was no part of her that desired to have the kind of responsibility they had. But they had a responsibility. And they were squandering it.

Petra stood up. “Listen up!”

Surprised, everybody in the cafeteria looked over at her. This was highly unusual behavior from what they’ve become accustomed to. They were used to drudgery and just “doing your job” all the time. No yelling.

“I can hear everything the higher ups are saying!” she said. They listened. “A malfunctioning earpiece has given me the gift of revelation. There is a food shortage. And they’re trying to keep it a secret.” There was an uproar. “Instead of asking for help from the millions of people that live here, they try to come up with a solution by themselves. What else aren’t they telling us? What if the surface of the Earth is just fine? I say we leave! Who’s with me?”

They all cheered. Hans looked on in horror from the edge of the hallway and immediately ran back to Leon’s office. He swung the door open and slammed it shut behind him.

Hans slammed his hands on Leon’s desk and said, “Sir, we’ve made a horrible mistake.” Upon recounting what Petra said, Hans and Leon ran down the hallway and out into the common room. There was chaos. Running, screaming, fighting. Hans followed Leon through the corridors leading to the room that led up to the surface. It was open and there was a line of people barreling through.

“This isn’t good,” said Leon. Hans didn’t have a response. “They don’t understand what’s up there.”

“We had a good run. Looks like it’s over. At least we didn’t starve to death.”

“You wanna follow them up there?” Leon almost wasn’t surprised.

“Why not? We won’t survive long down here anyway.” Leon knew Hans was right.

“It’s a thirty five mile trek.” A last ditch effort by Leon to discourage the thought of returning to the surface.

“After you.” Hans extended his hand. Leon looked back at the people fighting in the common room. The ones not joining the mass exodus.

“What about all them? We can’t leave them behind, can we?”

“They’ll follow. They always do.”

Leon looked back at the tunnel leading to the surface. He joined in the crowd. Hans followed.

***

Luckily the tunnel was inclined enough that it wasn’t like climbing a mountain. But it was still walking up an incline for thirty-five miles. It took several days. They would stop at springs of water or little trickles running down the rock to keep hydrated. To keep millions of people hydrated. There was some fighting. It was unavoidable. There will always be fighting. The need to survive and the threat of not being able to takes over people’s instincts.

Lights lined the tunnel. Self-powered by little perpetually moving mechanisms. Put there by the original diggers. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Then came another, much bigger light. Staring at the multitude from the end of the tunnel. Petra was in the front of all of them. She was too tired to run towards the light, no matter how badly she wanted to. Everybody was too tired for that. But then she finally reached it. She could smell a different air. The light blinded her. And then she emerged. It was odd. On the one hand, she had been selling everybody on the notion they were being lied to about the surface being uninhabitable. But deep down she had the sinking feeling that they weren’t lying. And here she was, standing on the Earth, looking out, and seeing all sorts of green things and crisp air. Not a threat to be found.

Hans and Leon emerged and expected to die pretty much instantly. But they hadn’t been hearing screams. And when they got to the surface, they were surprised. Leon nearly kicked himself.

“It was all a lie,” he said.

“Maybe the monsters are lying in wait somewhere,” replied Hans. “Or maybe they died out.”

Leon looked up. He saw things floating in the air. They looked like giant aircraft carriers. They were little cities. Leon had heard about them. How the more wealthy took to the safe skies, while the less wealthy were forced to go underground. He turned to Hans and said, “Or maybe they didn’t want us here anymore.”