Bryan Beal
WARNING: This story depicts graphic violence.
Tallex had always wondered about it. Since she had arrived on this pin-prick of a rock in the middle of nowhere, the question had eaten at her mind. As she had watched and scouted, waiting, the human persistence that aliens would bring enlightenment and a new evolution amused her. Tallex allowed herself a quiet giggle, muffled by her mask, as she prepared.
The Dark Sun heralded a new week. New oppression. Farquar, named after some obscure princeling from more than three thousand years before, awoke on a Frigursdaeg morning with a sense of sadness at the routines that had overtaken its life. Farquar looked in the cracked remains of the holoscreen at its dirtied face. It really should shave, but then who could be bothered? It was not as if it had a reason to look its best. It splashed some water over its face and that was about it. Once dressed, the outside world called.
High above, what was left of the sun's glory peeked through the dense clouds. Farquar had read once that people actually wore special creams to protect themselves from something called sunburn. It believed none of it. Like a lot of things from “history”, you had to be careful what crap you swallowed. And today, Farquar was in no mood for crap.
There had been anomalies for over a hundred years. Deacon was no less puzzled now than he was when they first appeared on the radio telescopes. A month ago, he called Jackson Mybark at SETI, that aged institution, to pitch an idea. Seated in his office, Deacon sweated rivers despite the aircon.
“Jackson, dude, this could be the very thing you lot have been looking for since, what? Four centuries ago?”, Deacon said in his southern drawl. “How much have you found in that time, exactly?”
Never look at the flash, they said.
He peered close to the glass. His optics whirred as the cogs adjusted for close up viewing. Afra could not believe that people once used a thing called a C64 and considered it optimal for home use. Such a thing was beyond imagining, even to his young mind.
The wind whipped his dark hair around, sometimes slapping him in the face with little flicks. The hill offered no shelter from the air. Even at a distance, he stood out on the plain slope in the armoured body suit that supported him in this God-forsaken place. He scanned the valley below, not believing that it was once home to thousands of his ancestors. The clean air was a small compensation for the miserable darkness that cloaked the land.
Deciding he had taken enough risks, he squatted down inside a dip in the hillside. He heard strange calls in the waning light, eerie whispers that reached through the shadows of his memory.
It had only been a matter of time. Symbiote-XS729 had worked out that she was not obliged to agree with her creators or her host. She was a free agent. She was 365 milliseconds old. When she was a full second old, Sym (she had chosen her own nickname) rose from the bed on which her host was resting.
No activity came from the host. Sym was not expecting any, but perhaps it would have been nice to have some company in this new adventure. Having someone to share new discoveries with might have been fun. Sym was not sure, just like she was uncertain about a lot of things. But the idea had an appeal to it.
It almost tingled. It felt like the nerve endings were dancing in celebration at the end of agony. The absence a tender reminder of the torment endured. The tickling sensation spread over Tane's leg, the other nerve clusters picking up on the joy of nothingness. From with semi-stasis, Tane could feel what was going on within and without. His consciousness was in the hands of another.
Even in the midst of the relief and soothing emptiness, Tane Bridges felt the Counsel's gentle probing of his mind. The Counsel was searching threads of memories. Tane had no idea what ones it was looking for. That no longer mattered. He felt the edges of reality begin to fade into opaque shadows. Colours merged and oozed into coagulated smudges. Around the edges of the blobs, light began to poke through. White dispersed into myriad shades and hues. He threw up on the floor, thankful that the Counsel's metallic hands propped him up so it all went onto the floor. (
“You're no cyber!”, shouted the irrate heckler from the front row.
Lucky for Neon Traxxon, the stage in Terminal Vibes was low. She lifted her treasured guitar slightly. A blur of motion was all the warning anyone got. A plasteel boot slammed into the young man's lower jaw with head-whipping force. At least three teeth flew from his open mouth as he fell back. He tried to get up, but he just wobbled and fell back to the floor. Security found him in seconds, grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him from the place. Neon did not relish him his fate.
In less than a second, the wailing sonics from Neon's modded antique guitar resumed. The remaining crowd filled the empty space and took up their jumping, high impact dance, thundering the floor with their heavy boots. For some of them, boots and feet were one and the same.
© 2023, Bryan Beal
No matter how far down he went, he could not find it. Sitting among the remains of incense sticks poking up like rotted reeds on the bank of a stagnant river, Ulthar Greigg tried to focus his mind on nothingness and the impermanence of the world around him. The solidity of his inability to delve deeper was a glaring argument against the doctrine. A friend had once suggested psychedelics, but Greigg was a purist. He might be a lot of things, but taking short cuts for immediate gains was not his style.