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May 27, 2005

Volume 1, Issue 15

Since we have so many who are so entertainingly composing futuristic pieces, let's have a dedicated sci-fi theme today, but with some "don't"s instead of "do"s:

- Don't make the setting on Earth.
- Don't include aliens.
- Don't rip off any previously established mythos (ie. Star Trek, Galactica, etc.).

That's some pretty wide latitude but I think this group can more than handle it. Good luck!

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Comments

The twisted metal forms on the ground hissed and smoked. Sometimes a small chunk would fall away into the mud, exploding if it happened to land in a puddle. But mostly it just sizzled, popped, and crackled. It had been doing this consistently for weeks. No semblance of the original form could be seen.

The woman at the window sighed deeply and turned away. "Did we have to come to Venus for the winter, George?"

Her husband looked up from his paper and picked up his coffee cup. "It was your idea, Helen. And so was the aluminum sculpture garden."

Posted by: Tanya at May 27, 2005 5:27 AM · Permalink

Seconds from the event horizon, the tractor beam caught him.

The skiff shuddered under the strain of opposing forces, slewed to the side, and finally came to relative rest with a chorus of creaks and groans – intact, but not for long.

As a cofferdam extended from the larger ship, Reg grabbed what belongings he could, stuffing them into a satchel. By the time he had pressurized his helmet and strapped a spot torch to his belt, the seals on the airlock were beginning to hiss.

He slapped the light control, slipped into the shielded compartment, and prepared for the worst.

Posted by: Keiran Halcyon at May 27, 2005 5:45 AM · Permalink

Tanya, your -1 is a result of my retardedness. I swear I was reaching for the + sign! Dammit!

Posted by: Sekimori at May 27, 2005 5:47 AM · Permalink

Is the rule, "No alien characters," or "No mention of aliens at all, even as a concept"?

Posted by: David at May 27, 2005 6:57 AM · Permalink

Mother shushed the children as they tumbled, laughing, into the house.

“Mam.” They fell silent, glancing at the ancient woman. Mother singled out Seth, “My eggs?”

He grabbed his antigrav belt, hating his chore of chasing chickens out of the trees, avoiding their needle teeth, just so Mother had fresh eggs for breakfast. He ignored Mam, a First Wave, weeping over album images that rotated above her lap. “Unfair.” Seth mumbled as he unsealed the door and stepped out under the two rising moons, “I’m SO off this farm when I’m 18.”

Too bad he could never go to Earth.

Posted by: Darleen at May 27, 2005 6:58 AM · Permalink

For all the differences in the environment my great grandfather would have been right at home here, thought Jeb. Ice mining in the asteroid belt was hazardous work and instead of caveins we worry about meteor showers. This has been a good month we have only lost two men. Great grandpa Zed would be able to handle this better, having listened to all the stories grandma Becky told, I am sure of it.
The all clear warble comes over the radio. After a glance at the headsup showing 14 green lights. "Allright Everyone Back At It !"
"Great stars tonight Jeb"

Posted by: blaine at May 27, 2005 7:01 AM · Permalink

David, assume we are alone.

Posted by: Sekimori at May 27, 2005 7:07 AM · Permalink

Thirty years have passed. The ship creaks and pops, but still holds. Holds for what reason, though. There are only two of them left; the only two who launched in time. Fuel is draining away. Two days, it will be gone.

It has been thirty years of silence, neither man speaking to the other. A ship such as this flies itself. Or did.

Orbit decays; atmosphere burns. Time and life at their ends. Better still than what they left behind.

"I should have listened. Helped you stop them. But I thought 'dystopia' was a gastric problem."

"That's 'dyspepsia', you ass."

Posted by: marc at May 27, 2005 7:31 AM · Permalink

He had believed that immortality would be a good thing.

Who wouldn't want to live forever? He laughed bitterly, but only in his mind. The viscous gel he breathed, if it could be called breathing, did not allow him to produce sound. The straps held every muscle in place while the electroshock kept them from atrophying.

His only measure of grace was the narrow observation slit directly in front of his eyes. He watched the stars glide by, and wondered if he’d find wonder and happiness at the end of his journey, or if his terrible voyage would never end.

Posted by: Hubris at May 27, 2005 7:55 AM · Permalink

Oops, I was writing mine and didn't hit refresh so I didn't see your entry, Marc. There's a small overlap in our themes, sorry to step on your fictional toes.

Posted by: Hubris at May 27, 2005 8:04 AM · Permalink

No problem. I just wanted to make the 'dystopia'/'dyspepsia' joke which, despite being incredibly stupid, cracks me up. The rest was just the bacon on the ice cream

Posted by: marc at May 27, 2005 8:10 AM · Permalink

I thought it was funny.

Posted by: Hubris at May 27, 2005 8:14 AM · Permalink

Bernard powered up the time machine. "Finally... after fifteen years, my life's work is completed. All the equations... triple-checked! All the paradoxes... accounted for! There's only one thing left to do..." He smiled as he buckled himself in. "Let's see what's going on in the world next week," he said as he pressed the glowing green button.

Immediately, Bernard felt the air rushing from his lungs. He heard nothing. His back was on fire; his face freezing. "What is happening to me?" Then he knew, and he cursed himself as he died. "I can't believe I forgot about planetary orbit..."

Posted by: Johnny Catbird at May 27, 2005 8:48 AM · Permalink

Tim never understood the science behind the dimensional portal. Something about submicroscopic singularities beaded on a cosmic string. Frankly, he didn’t care. Tim had been told why Portal Station was orbiting the Sun but he hadn’t paid much attention.

Tim was Portal Station’s Lead Sanitation Officer. Tim cleaned the toilets.

Sometimes another group of young people arrived in shiny new spacesuits. But a quick trip through the dimensional portal made people age. By next week those that survived the trip would be old and infirm but their eyes would reflect the wonders they had seen.

And Tim cleaned the toilets.

Posted by: Jim Parkinson at May 27, 2005 9:00 AM · Permalink

I forsee... Tanya's debut as a primary author.

Posted by: Laurence Simon at May 27, 2005 9:05 AM · Permalink

What makes us spinbelters special? Son, we're the last real humans left. We don't mix species or tamper with God's blueprints, and if that means spending energy on gravity unlike the stillbelter bird-bones, so be it.

The Marsies are worse, with their low-oxygen lungbladders. And the vacuum-adapted freaks and the Europans with their gills and antifreeze blood share less DNA with our species than cockroaches.

Earth? The Artintell Occupied Government edits each genome before allowing birth. They say they're wiping out diseases, but they're breeding for docility. No, we're the last remnant of God's chosen species left. Be proud, Son.

Posted by: Jeff R. at May 27, 2005 9:59 AM · Permalink

The brochure had been wrong.

“Wonderful sights from the dawn of time to the end of the universe! See the birth of the cosmos!” Sixteen thousand dollars for the lousy kit (with instructions in gibberish), and all he’d seen so far were a few black hole collapses (what’s so great about a dark spot in the sky?) and the tail end of a supernova. So he’d overcharged the temporal circuits and headed for the Big Bang, and…

Nothing was there. Nothing.

Grumbling, he reset the machine for the present and pushed the button.

Behind him, the universe erupted into existence.

Posted by: Keiran Halcyon at May 27, 2005 10:39 AM · Permalink

What sucked about the whole thing was Steve didn't want to go to Titan. The seals on airlocks kept leaking, so even if you never went outdoors everything at the base was cold and grimy. And looking outdoors was just a gloomy experience. Any other moon of Saturn and you’d get a great view of the ringed beauty, unless you were on the far side of a moon with synchronous rotation. But the gray soot that passed for an atmosphere inevitably cast a pall over everything. It didn’t help that the locals tried to compensate with overly-harsh brilliant white lighting.

Posted by: John at May 27, 2005 10:54 AM · Permalink

“Another giant leap for Mankind!” Miguel repeated. He regretted that the suit helmet prevented him from wiping his eyes. Tears were the least of his worries.

Io was a creepy place. Blue and green auroras danced everywhere through the pale yellow ash. A gossamer volcano plumed in slow motion on the close horizon.

“It seemed funny at the time,” Franklin’s raspy voice replied over the radio. “Did they figure out a way to get me down?”

“They aren’t sounding very positive. Looks like you may be up there a long time.”

Io now had it’s own moon. It was Franklin.

Posted by: Jim Parkinson at May 27, 2005 11:54 AM · Permalink

I love these elevators. They remind people about Willy Wanker's factory, whoever the hell he was. A little tweak from our hosts toolkits and they fly. Lunch my ass, I'm goin for a fuckin ride.

I am halfway around this shitpile of a moon when the elevator wants to go home. Bigwigs. They go to them like puppies. Like they'll get a frickin treat or something.

Even at this speed, I have plenty of time to undo my little tweaks. I pull in gently like nothings up, and rip a nasty fart before the doors open.

It's the little things.

Posted by: hayner at May 27, 2005 1:51 PM · Permalink

"Anything?"
"System 42 negative, Captain. No life."
The Captain pounded the armrest of his chair. "Damn it! Lieutenant, how long have we been doing this?"
"25 years subjective, 512 years Earth-relative, sir."
The Captain slumped. "All that time, and we've never discovered so much as a microbe out here."
"No, sir."
"I don't understand. We followed their clues. We're out here. Where are they?"
The Lieutenant glanced suspiciously at his captain. "You've got to have faith, sir."
"Of course. Make for survey system 43."
With that, the Abductee Coalition flagship Streiber launched itself back into the emptiness of interstellar space.

Posted by: David at May 27, 2005 1:52 PM · Permalink

The last thing Tom expected when he opened the hatch door was nothing.

And yet that’s exactly what he saw.

Nothing.

Not “nothing” in the sense of “Move along, please, nothing to see here”, but rather “nothing” in the sense of there being absolutely nothing to see, period. Here, there or anywhere else, from the looks of it.

Nothing, that is, except blackness.

Tom looked up. Down. He turned to the left. To the right. Everywhere he looked, nothing but blackness.

He cocked his head and listened. Listened to the blackness. And he heard nothing.

“Hello?” he whispered.

Nothing answered.

Posted by: copygodd at May 27, 2005 2:33 PM · Permalink

2:58. The cabin clock was set to Eastern Standard but it was 2:58 in Houston.

Two minutes to check-in.

He fingered his dogtag. "EVANS, THOMAS J., MAJOR, USAF." He'd been a Captain for eight years, until the eve of the mission. And now, now....

3:00 in Houston. The speakers crackled to life.

"Houston to Icarus. Report."

"This is Icarus. Systems normal."

He tensed.

"We do not copy, Icarus."

"THIS IS ICA--"

"We do. not. copy."

His face darkened. He knew what they wanted.

"This is Major Tom to ground control."

Peals of laughter through the speakers.

The sons of bitches.

Posted by: Allah at May 27, 2005 3:27 PM · Permalink

The sky hung low over Hellas Planitia. It was the hottest Martian summer on record since they terraformed the planet over a century ago.

Mayuko stepped out of the shower. On sweltering evenings like this she preferred to let her wet skin cool in the air of her apartment.

She slid into her chair, jumping at the feel of cold aluminum on her naked body. She plugged the glowing fiber-optic cable from her cyber-modem into the jack behind her right ear, and hit the power button.

With a brilliant burst of white noise, her sensorium shifted to the net.

Posted by: k@os at May 27, 2005 11:03 PM · Permalink

Timms liked the job maintaining the hyper-space beacons surrounding the solar system.

31 months out, another 40 on the maintenance schedule, and 31 months back in.

It gave him time to think.

Posted by: Eric Blair at May 28, 2005 5:55 AM · Permalink

"Sit down, Mr. Camlet, please."

Karl sat down slowly. It wasn't going to be good news. He wouldn't be seeing a human doctor if it was anything ordinary.

"Just tell me one thing, Doctor," he said, edging forward, "Is there any chance
it could be cancer?"

The doctor's face fell.

"I'm very sorry."

"The last tests were pretty conclusive. We're quite sure you don't have cancer. We, ah, think you may have one of the new influenzas."

"Now, that's doesn't mean you shouldn't be quite hopeful. There are some very promising clinical trials that we think you'll be eligible for."

Posted by: Carthoris of Helium at May 28, 2005 6:03 PM · Permalink

Author's afterword: Cancer being a stationary, but microbes and virii a moving target, this scenario will certainly be true sometimes in the next century.

Posted by: Carthoris of Helium at May 28, 2005 6:07 PM · Permalink