Gabriel Valladão Silva
Mark Mellon
Tom Koperwas
Alexander Philip Bird
Humphrey Price
Weaver of dark tales and explorer of the human psyche.
Featuring an exclusive story & interview with JANUARY 2025
Volume 5/Issue 1
By Steven S Behram, MD Editor-In-Chief
What does the universe whisper when no one is listening? The January 2025 edition of SavagePlanets dares you to lean closer, to press your imagination against the hum of stardust and hear the echoes of worlds unseen. These pages ripple with the gravity of untold stories—some vibrant with the light of creation, others forged in the crucible of cosmic chaos. Step into the liminal spaces where science collides with speculation, where a flicker of humanity survives in the heart of a dying machine, and where a single choice might tilt the axis of entire civilizations.
Dive into the incandescent heart of creation with this quarter’s SavagePlanets, where every story and poem blazes into being like a star born from the cradle of cosmic dust. Our visionary contributors have spun threads of mystery and wonder, weaving pathways that lead from the echoes of Earth’s known horizons to the uncharted vistas of speculative realms. Let yourself be enveloped by their brilliance, as each word unveils a radiant journey through the infinite possi bilities of the imagination.
loss, and transformation. Let these verses challenge your sense of reality and illuminate the infinite possibilities of the unknown.
In this edition’s "Planetary Communiqué," Hojack offers an uproarious account of Earth’s latest misadventure: a global “drone crisis” viewed through the many lenses of his alien perspective. As Earthlings flounder between panic and pomp, Hojack documents the chaos with biting humor, from politicians’ theatrical proclamations to the public’s frantic paranoia over suspicious lights. With a sprinkle of royal edicts from Overlord Grawth, this dispatch transforms Earth’s flailing response into a galactic comedy classic. Once again, humanity proves to be the galaxy's favorite sitcom!
This edition’s "Imaginaria" delves into the fabric of perception itself, unraveling boundaries between
the tangible and the fantastical. These evocative poems journey through the rise of artificial minds, the whispers of forsaken cities, and the melan that move with clockwork precision. From the spectral wanderer of Orion to the fragile humanity flickering within machines, each piece navigates the profound interplay of memory,
This issue’s short stories ignite the imagination with journeys into mysterious and thrilling realms. In "Resting in Her Darkness" by Erik R. Andara, a nurse’s unsettling experiences in Egypt lead him to Vienna and a strange new chapter. Gabriel Valladão Silva’s "The Missing Link" takes readers to Travula Ridge, where a discovery might solve the evolutionary mystery of hexapods. "Convict Mine: Asteroid Psyche 16" by Mark Mellon pits a gambler against impossible odds in a high-stakes bet on a distant asteroid. Tom Koperwas’s "Outside Chance" follows a wife’s tense vigil as her imprisoned husband risks everything in a perilous contest
for freedom. In Alexander Philip Bird’s "Life Has No Form: It’s An Idea," a quartet of cyborg investigators encounter a shocking truth on Iris-1412. Finally, Humphrey Price’s "The Shadow of Death" unfolds as a mission to divert a killer asteroid unravels under the weight of its crew’s internal conflicts. These tales probe the boundaries of courage, survival, and the unknown, offering a galaxy of suspense and wonder.
This edition’s Sci-Fi Entertainment section features a trio of engaging explorations into speculative creativity. "The Thousand Faced Poet" dives into the life and artistry of Austrian writer Erik R. Andara, unveiling his journey from tattoos to tales of “Phantastik” and his innovative take on magical realism.
Next, "Echoes of A Voyage to Arcturus" revisits David Lindsay’s classic scifi novel, dissecting its
philosophical underpinnings and its impact on speculative fiction over a century.
Finally, "UFO: Adventures in the Far Future (1980)" celebrates the iconic British series that blended alien intrigue with retro-futuristic aesthetics, exploring its themes of survival, secrecy, and humanity’s enduring curiosity.
Together, these features illuminate the boundless creativity driving the sci-fi universe.
As this edition of SavagePlanets comes to a close, we reflect on
the extraordinary journeys taken through the boundless realms of imagination. The stories and poems within these pages have dared us to confront the unknown, stretch beyond the familiar, and question the very fabric of reality. From alien horizons to the hidden landscapes of the human heart, they remind us that exploration knows no limits—neither in the cosmos nor within ourselves.
Imagination, like the stars, is a light that guides us through the dark and uncharted. It challenges us to dream with courage, to seek meaning in the mysterious, and to embrace the wonders we uncover along the way.
Thank you, fellow voyagers, for joining us on this odyssey through the strange and spectacular. Until the next adventure, keep your curiosity boundless, your dreams vivid, and your gaze firmly fixed on the stars. The universe is calling, and countless frontiers await.
BY ERIK R. ANDARA
Between sentences and the Fentanyl rushes, I lie and listen, mesmerized by the chirping of her pulse on the screen of the heart monitor."
When the Von Tremenbachers were finally out the door, the first thing I did was switch off the air conditioning and open the windows. It's still far too warm outside, but there's a gentle breeze now. The princess in the tower, that's how I feel here sometimes, locked away and left alone. I don't know why, but somehow I like the idea.
It's almost dusk, only at the outermost edge of the city the sun is still bleeding into the sky; all around, I hear the crackling of the gradually cooling roofs. The Viennese nightlife awakens sluggishly between the buildings below, like the rhythmic breathing of the mechanically wheezing respirator in the room.
It relentlessly blows air into the slender body on the bed. Buried in bright white sheets, Dorothea’s fragile rib cage works like the bellows of a bird trying to take flight. It rises and falls, rises and falls, completely in tune with the murmur of the streets and the periodic chirping of the heart monitor.
I pop one pill that’s on the medication trolley in case of an emergency. The kind she might need to avoid the agony of waking up should it ever happen. Not that anyone really believes Dorothea would ever regain consciousness. She's far too out of it to return from her coma; all her doctors confirm this. I sit down on the windowsill, nine stories above the street.
I swing my legs out the window, into the open air. I will not jump. No, no, no, I don’t want that. There’s about half an hour before the opioid kicks in with the pleasant dizziness that will make it too dangerous to continue sitting here. The drug offers an ongoing invitation to jump into the sucking abyss beneath my feet.
Until then, I have time, and I plan to spend it right here on the windowsill. I long for a bit of freedom. I don't think anyone can blame me. The black edges of the roofs on the horizon swallow up the last hint of daylight. All that's left now is the glow of the city's many
colorful faceted eyes.
I lower my eyelids and pretend I'm back in El-Quseir, the warm wind in my hair, the undulating Red Sea in front of me and Ligeia by my side, her heavy, feverish head on my shoulder. ‘Ligeia?’ I ask her one more time to be sure. ‘Like in the story by Poe? Where she conjures the Conqueror Worm?’ And just like that, she replies, and then whispers some of her darkest secrets in my ear; I believe most of them, I love her, and not just for that.
Ligeia said she was a night traveler, a seeker who found it difficult to stay in one place for a long time because she would fall into melancholy if she did. And she didn't want that. In that respect, she was simply weak and fragile as is any human. At the time, I knew what she was talking about. I knew the feeling; I still know it far too well to contradict her.
On the Egyptian coast, home was just a distant memory for me. The thought alone of returning filled
me with dread. And Ligeia traveled from even further away. If she was to be believed–and yes, that's what I wanted, absolutely! She was in Egypt just to be with me!
I like to remind myself of that, rocking on the windowsill, feeling the first hint of the drug taking effect. I’m lost. Just as much as I was last year on the Red Sea, listening to the symphony of the fully functional hospital suite in Dorothea’s bedroom and the moonlit city beyond.
But why did Ligeia have to leave me then, knowingly returning after just a few sweet hours to a place where I can never follow her? I don't know, between all the whispered explanations about the most hidden and forbidden mysteries of creation, she never found the time to tell me. She just kept saying, “next time.”
I no longer can bear the sky beyond this room, however dark it might be; I crawl back in, stagger to the bedside with tears in my eyes and gaze in disbelief at Dorothea's fragile body. She has nothing in common with Ligeia, except perhaps the color of her skin: so pale that it seems almost translucent. As if she could fade away at any moment in a blur. Her flimsy contours could simply vanish from the world, just
as Ligeia's did. One moment they’re here, the next, blown out to sea on the balmy, salty wind–and nothing of them would remain. Dorothea is now so emaciated she barely leaves an imprint on the mattress when I roll her every two hours to prevent her from getting bedsores.
But otherwise they don’t look alike at all, my two lovers at opposite ends of the world. Leaning in close, there are just two bloodless lines on Dorothea's face where Ligeia's lips curved red and plump. Dorothea’s hair is dry straw whereas Ligeia had thick, raven-colored tresses. Dorothea is smaller, even more inconspicuous than the delicate figure I remembered when she was in full bloom.
She was the first girl I kissed, in the girls' bathroom in the sixth grade at St Agnes Grammar School; my stomach clenched into a fist with excitement, my heart a treacherous, wildly beating bush drum that hammered so loudly against my ribs I feared it would betray us to the bathroom monitor at any moment. But nothing of the sort happened.
Apart from my heart's first rebellious staccato and the subsequent feeling of her brittle, chapped lips rubbing roughly against mine, I remember
nothing of Dorothea in the intervening years. And now–completely unexpectedly–I am with her again. She is my lifeline in a world that seems completely insane. The one Ligeia revealed to me through her sinister games, the invisible strings holding it all together at its core. Sometimes I wish I didn't know, I wish my dark lover had never shared those things with me. How much easier everything would have been!
I reach for the plastic medication dispenser, tap out a second pill and swallow it, then another and another; I feel that a single one won't be enough tonight. The Von Tremenbachers are going out, maybe all night. At least that's what they told me–and it wouldn’t be the first time they hadn't honored their promise to return. They sleep out often. They never talk about it, but I suspect that these long parties at friends' houses, where they regularly socialize, are in fact key exchange parties for swingers.
I once discovered an invitation to one on the kitchen table: a plain white card made of fine paper, embossed in black, with one of the most prestigious addresses in Vienna written on it. Not dubious looking, but still–they always returned the next morning in a state of excitement, and often separately. Their faces flush, smelling like someone else.
In the seven months they’ve employed me, I regularly heard them making love the next evening. Otherwise never, and only after their nights out, which is a bit of a giveaway. But what's it to me? It means nothing! They are adults, they should be out there having fun. I would do the same if I were them, and I could afford it. In view of the tragic fate of their daughter, they deserve every bit of happiness they can muster, however fleeting it may be.
I can now feel the glow of the Fentanyl creeping into my stomach. The opioid nausea and mellowness gradually rising inside me. It makes me realize how empty I am. Emptier than empty, stripped of everything
I once was. Ligeia would have understood what I meant.
Sometimes I wish I didn't know. I wish my mystical lover had never shared her darkness with me. How much easier everything could be then!
I lie down on the bed beside Dorothea. Snuggle up close to her cool body, my lips pressed against her cheeks, my eyes closed. It's the first time I've done this, and it feels right.
“Poor Dorothea, poor, poor Dorothea,” I whisper, trying to warm her cheeks with my breath–a hopeless endeavor. I soon give up, preferring to use my exhalations on telling her Osiris's story once again. How his treacherous brother cruelly dismembered him and scattered his pieces all over the world. Waiting to be found by someone, someday.
Osiris, the god of death, is everywhere: above and below, in the light and in the dark. I am trying to find exactly the same words that Ligeia used when she wanted to give me hope with this story. She succeeded, but I don’t remember how. And just now, I think I can feel Dorothea's heartbeat quicken under my caressing fingers as I describe Osiris's beauty to her.
Between sentences and the Fentanyl rushes, I lie and listen, mesmerized by the chirping of her pulse on the screen of the heart monitor. Like the song of a night bird, its voice rising, getting louder and louder. The longer I tell her my mistress of the night is out there, the more joyful it sounds in my ears.
“Patience, we just need to be patient, that's all that's required of us,” I whisper and kiss her forehead.
Dorothea's skin feels just as rough against my lips as it did back at St. Agnes’s. It’s just as I remembered it. I don't mention that waiting, being separated from Ligeia, is the heaviest burden ever placed on me.
From outside, the night crashes
through the open windows, flooding the room and running into every corner; I hear the darkness, distant voices blurring, car horns, the siren of an ambulance fading in the distance. My eyes keep closing, because the pills are all taking effect, hitting me at the same time.
It's becoming increasingly difficult for me to tell when I'm awake and when I'm asleep and dreaming. I hear someone whispering. I think I’m the one who continues to explain to Dorothea how some of us must carry the martyred pieces of Osiris inside us, waiting for them to join in his resurrection. Sometimes, I use a different name for the tortured god, who is not a god and never was. Merely, a king given godhood by people who thought they could understand the afterlife.
Those priests understood nothing! Nothing! How could we, with our human limitations, ever understand the beings who travel the eternal night, like Ligeia? But she kept no secrets from me. She willingly explained everything I wanted to know, yet my mind couldn’t retain the visions. I couldn’t hold on to the figments of the realities that lay beyond this one.
“Thank you,” I hear myself whisper.
“Thank you, Dorothea, for being there for me again after all these years. I deeply regret what happened to you, but I don't even want to imagine where I would be now without your lifeless body; what I would do if you hadn't had this accident–if it even was an accident! The Von Tremenbachers were very secretive about it.
“I suspect when you stepped out onto the autobahn, it might not have been as carelessly as they led me to believe. You always made a very sad impression on me, even back then at school. Did I waste my first kiss out of pity for you?
“But believe me, that was not the right way, not the door that leads to the outside. The one you wanted to pass through that day. All that remains for us is to wait until Ligeia finds us, and perhaps takes us there. Finally reunite us with the other parts of Osiris. And only if the gods favor us, of course.
“I believe you've realized that by now yourself, where you are now, in that bed. In here, in the wrong kind of blackness, with not enough strength left to swim back to either life or death. You believe me, don't you? Why else would you still be
clinging to that shattered body?
Have you met her? Have you tasted Ligeia’s sweetness, as I have?
“You have, haven't you? I can tell. You're waiting for her embrace, I can feel it! At least I hope so, because anything else would mean... would mean that you are stuck here, against your will... but then... all these machines… they would be a prison for you. But I... if that were the case, I still couldn't let you go. It’s my job… for what that’s worth.
“I know how heartless this makes me seem, but I need you, Dorothea, more than you realize. And I don't just mean because it’s my job. Which came up so unexpectedly when I bumped into your parents on my return to Vienna from El-Quseir. I felt devastated after they expelled me from Egypt. His voice still echoes in my mind, ‘You're no tourist, you're a beggar, and we're sick of you privileged white kids taking from us, instead of giving. Especially when this country desperately needs money.’ The policeman at the station spat that in my face with heavily accented words.
They resonate inside me even now, long after he picked me up and arrested me. I will never forget those words! I hit rock bottom, Dorothea. No doubt in my mind. I was well aware of it, but what else could I do?
told them I graduated from nursing school with honors before my trip to the south. They offered me a job right then and there, here with you, after I told them I didn't have a permanent position.
“Dorothea, how could I concentrate on finding work when all my thoughts fixated on her? On my Ligeia. I realized your parents just threw me a lifeline. And it suddenly became clear to me: Everything was going exactly according to the plan of my beloved mistress of the night!”
I felt my body shaking with the Fentanyl thundering in my veins.
“Oh, how could I ever have doubted her? She wanted me to wait for her here, beside my Dorothea, I understand that now. We'll just wait
Fear wells up in me again. Fear of not being a piece of Osiris my Ligeia is looking for. I’m afraid of having to stay alone forever–a stranger among strangers. If I had never met Ligeia, I wouldn't have this problem today. I wouldn't know how good her familiarity can feel. The blissful glow as the opioid washes through my limbs and presses me heavily into the mattress is nothing compared to it, nothing! But it will have to do for now. I have nothing else, except Dorothea of course! Cool, forbidding Dorothea, condemned to wait with me. I press myself closer to her, hiding my face in her hair. It takes a moment before I realize something is different; I must have been asleep, sleeping, and dreaming. Maybe I still am.
Just because I begged German tourists at the Ottoman Castle to give me money so I could stay longer! My parents didn't want to send me any more cash, they wanted to force me to come home. I lost Ligeia and hadn't found her yet. Couldn't leave without her, I absolutely had to stay! And then this! Deported against my will, locked out, they even banned me from ever returning. All I have now of Egypt is a memory. They even took my camera.
“And then I met your parents in the supermarket, purely by chance. When they told me about you... I
together, you and me. Ligeia will come and collect us together.”
I’m too dazed to get up and get a drink, even though all the talking has left my mouth parched. Dorothea's chest rises and falls under my arm in time with the mechanical bellows.
The world is a black vortex around the bed. I can hear it throbbing and groaning. And while I lie there defenseless, fear crawls out of the same dark whirlpool and spreads its wings over me, threatening to suffocate us both underneath.
Nevertheless, I clearly recognize the dark strands that now surround my face. Dorothea's hair is blonde, but the one I've laid my head beside is now black. Black as the darkest night, black as...
“Did you miss me, lover? I promised I'd come back for you,” I hear her sweetest whisper.
And even before I lift my head, with the greatest of difficulty, to look into her beautiful, pale face, I already know it's her, my Ligeia. At this darkest hour, she returned to take away all my doubts. When else? When else? Of course, it could happen only like this!
The black vortex grows, no longer confined, enveloping us in a voluptuous warmth. I hardly waste a thought on it. I have everything I ever needed now that she is with me again. The fragile Dorothea and the radiating Ligeia merged. Full of bliss, we lie in each other’s arms. My dark lover is so close. Her fervent kiss on my forehead relieves me of all my recent torment and finally gives me peace.
Got an idea for a story? That's awesome!! Put pen to paper and consider submitting your content to SavagePlanets.
We are always looking for exclusive creative content in the following categories:
1. Sci-Fi Poetry
2. Sci-Fi Short Stories
3. Sci-Fi Entertainment
4.Sci-Fi Multimedia Arts
5. Two-liner Stories
Each month, we will select the best entries for publication in our magazine, our website, or social media accounts.
Visit our website at SavagePlanets.com for rules and our submission guidelines. All submissions must be your original work and you must have the rights to submit the work for publication. Must be 18 years or older. Additional rules apply.
BY G. V. SILVA
Could it be that primitive hexapods infested their ships? That the Tropian hexapods, including himself, Dr. Quozo Olb, evolutionary biologist, were actually—pests?"
“So this is what we call the missing link problem,” Quozo said, drawing a long black line across the whiteboard.
“This,” he made a dash across the line near the left end, “is when our planet was born, about three billion years ago.”
“Now this,” he crossed the line again a little further to the right, “is when life first emerged on our planet. Two point five billion years ago, more or less.”
He went on crossing the line with dashes. “Here is where we see the first land plants. Three hundred million years ago. First land animals came shortly thereafter, about two hundred million years ago. However, our oldest ancestors appeared only thirty million years ago. More or less here.” Quozo made one last dash toward the end of the line and turned to face his students.
“There are no fossil records of anything resembling the Hexapoda before that,” he continued. “As
far as we can tell, animal life on Tropis seems to have two completely distinct origins. We can trace one of them two point five billion years back in the history of our planet. But the hexapods, our own species included, descended from a common ancestor, Protoentomon urdensis, which is only thirty million years old.
“This common ancestor already displayed all the distinctive traits of hexapods such as bilateral symmetry, a tripartite body, three pairs of jointed legs, two pairs of wings, a pair of compound eyes, and a pair of antennae, as well as the skeleton fortified with calcium carbonate that allows us to support our own weight and to grow much larger than most land animals on Tropis. So how did this ancestor evolve? Where did we come from?”
Quozo paused, observing the quivering antennae in the half-empty classroom. It was close to noon on a Friday and the place was hot as an oven. An impatient buzzing and clicking came from
the already distracted students. Nobody seemed to have noticed that Quozo stopped talking.
“Clearly, this is a very boring subject to you all,” he concluded with a defeated gesture. He looked down at his watch and sighed. He, too, was tired. “I say we call it a day, then. Next week we’ll be talking about the different techniques used for dating fossil records and what they can tell us about the evolutionary history of our species. Have a pleasant weekend!”
Noise of drawing chairs drowned out Quozo’s last words as the students stuffed their bags and hurried to leave the classroom.
He was wiping the whiteboard when a student fluttered down from the top of the auditorium.
“Excuse me, Professor Olb.”
Quozo turned to look at the nymph. He could tell from the light hue of her tender skin that she wasn’t over seven or eight molts old.
“How can I help you?”
“Sorry to bother you. It’s just that I recently read an interesting paper about us roaches being exogenous to Tropis. Do you think we could really be aliens from outer space? I mean, is this a viable solution to the problem of the missing link?”
Quozo’s antennae twitched almost imperceptibly. Based on his experience with undergraduate students,
he knew where this was going. But he gave the youngster the benefit of the doubt.
“It’s a possibility, certainly… which has been much debated in the scientific community,” he answered patiently. “In theory, it would make sense to postulate a separate origin for the Hexapoda—maybe from a different planet, even.
“The thing is, Gorda Ti’s theory of
natural evolution must be correct. Scientists have proven it repeatedly in hundreds of different ways. We can trace all different classes of animals, from protopods to lymocephalids back to their common ancestors and all the way back to the beginning of life on Tropis.
“The same also holds true within the hexapod sub-kingdom. Roaches, sea bugs, brown jackets… even our pet cricks and scuttlers—we’re all related. But even today, we have no clue of how our species—or any species of hexapods—came into existence. Based on the fossil record, the common ancestor of all Hexapoda seems to have appeared out of thin air in the middle of the Penumbrean era. The missing link is still as much of a problem as it was ten years ago when we confirmed it through DNA analysis.
“So it would explain a lot of things if this common ancestor had somehow come to Tropis from somewhere else. But for now at least, this is all pure speculation. We have found no evidence to support such a bold claim. Quite to the contrary, paleontologists have recently—”
Halfway into Quozo’s speech, the nymph nibbled impatiently on the tarsi of her front legs. Unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst out: “And what about the Travula Murals?”
Quozo clicked his mandibles in annoyance. ‘I knew it,’ he thought, as his hemolymph boiled. He took a moment to compose himself.
“What about them?” he finally answered with feigned placidity.
“Don’t they prove that we really came from somewhere else?”
“No, I don’t think so. If anything, the murals raise more questions rather than they answer.”
“But Professor Gaudan says—” This time, Quozo cut the young nymph short with a brisk gesture. “Professor Gaudan is a charlatan doing a disservice to the scientific community with his ludicrous ancient astronaut theory.
“Yes, the murals are clearly one of
the most intriguing archaeological finds of the century. But to assume that they are artifacts of an ancestral space-faring race of roaches contradicts all the evidence we currently have on the evolution of our species. I would highly recommend that you don’t waste your time with such pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.”
“Of course, Professor,” the nymph mumbled, staring nervously at the ground.
“Enjoy your weekend!”
Quozo slammed his briefcase shut, packed it under his arm, and skittered towards the door. The little boots on his hind tarsi clickclacked on the linoleum floor as he left the dazed youth standing alone at the podium.
Back in his office, Quozo brewed himself a nice cup of starchy deedrus root extract, hoping to get some work done before lunchtime. He sat down on the creaky chair behind his desk and leaned back, reflexively stroking his antennae with his front leg.
A moment later, a tiny dappy scuttled in through a crack in the wall and went zig-zagging along the ground toward Quozo’s desk, propelling its soft body forward by flapping around its three long posterior limbs.
Quozo, who had been staring idly out his office window while sipping his creamy beverage, caught the little purple smudge moving in his peripheral vision. He leaped up, startled, spilling the deedrus and throwing back his chair, which struck the carpeted floor with a muted thud.
“Damned vermin,” he hissed, putting down his now half-empty cup on the desk. The department had suffered a dappy infestation for months, and it only seemed to get worse as the summer advanced.
Undisturbed, the dappy continued merrily on its path, stopping only when one of its ocular appendages
bumped against the desk’s leg. Quozo observed with an expression of disgust as it cleaned its eye stalks with its front pseudopods, its soft abdomen pulsating.
He then took a quick step toward the dappy and squashed it under the heel of his boot with a satisfying pop.
Quozo was under the desk on his four hind legs, using the other two to scoop up the dappy’s remains with two sheets of paper, when the comm slug on his desk honked. This caused him to jump up again and hit his head on the desktop.
“Son of a five-and-a-half-legged…” he grumbled, rubbing the sore spot as he backed out from under the desk to answer the call. He brushed aside a sticky pile of deedrus-stained papers, pulled the hooting slug from its terrarium on his desk, and squeezed it. A female voice spoke from the opening at the comm tube’s tip. It was Dzaine Khchshi, his secretary.
“Doctor Olb, there is a call for you from Professor Gaudan at the Travula dig,” she announced.
“Professor Gaudan?” he asked himself, rubbing the base of his antenna. ‘What could that old roach want now?’ He squeezed the slug again and held it to his mouth. “Put it through.”
“Can I also send in lunch?”
“By all means. And please let the building management know that
we still have dappies running loose in the office.” He let go of the comm slug and it quickly retracted back into its terrarium.
Almost immediately, it honked again. Still swearing under his breath, Quozo pulled it out and squeezed it to connect the call.
“Professor Gaudan, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Dr. Olb, my good old brown-banded friend! I’m so glad that I could reach you. I’m at the dig right now. You must come down here at once!”
Quozo had gone through his last molt as a freshbug in college. He now held a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology and an assistant professor position at the University of Liaria. To call him a brown-band was condescending, and frankly insulting.
“Excuse me, professor, but, as far as I know, they sealed off the dig at Travula Ridge since that landslide last weekend. A landslide, I might add, which may have cost us priceless treasures from our planet’s evolutionary past. And as it happens, I know for a fact that you and your team’s reckless excavation methods are directly responsible for this disaster. So I have nothing—”
“It’s true, my friend,” the professor interrupted, his raspy voice quivering with excitement. “The landslide all but destroyed our equipment. I was just as devastated as you when I first heard of it. I rushed down here to assess the damage. But what I found… what it revealed… it’s extraordinary!
Trust me, you will want to see this firsthand.”
“Another mural? What is it now? The ninth? Tenth?” Quozo asked, barely able to hold back his sarcasm.
“No, it’s not about the murals this time. At least not directly. Look, I don’t want to discuss this over the slugs. All I can say for now is we found indisputable evidence of our theory. In fact, it’s bigger—much bigger than even I thought! So please do yourself a favor and come down here immediately, before the place gets swarmed with reporters flying in from every nest on the continent.”
“I’ll be right down after lunch.” ‘And after contacting the police,’ Quozo added in his mind.
How dare the professor be at the dig after having destroyed half of the Travula site in pursuit of his crazy, childish theory? And how dare he call it ‘our’ theory?
Quozo had worked on the missing link problem for over a decade, poring over the ever-increasing DNA evidence and debating it with colleagues who were skeptical of any attempt to solve it—and rightly so. Slowly, he was making a name for himself on the subject.
But Mreet Avi Gaudan— how could the University of Liaria have given that roach a chair?—was everything but a respectable scientist.
the scientific community for decades. Utter nonsense in Quozo’s eyes.
“You can eat when you get here,” Professor Gaudan answered. “You won’t want to miss this!”
“Okay, okay, I’m on my way. Please tell your team not to touch anything until I get there.”
Gaudan sounded alarmingly excited. Whatever the professor was up to at the dig, it would probably be best if Quozo got there before he and his team did further damage to the site. Maybe this was his opportunity to document the professor’s unscrupulous research methods. Finally, a chance to bring him down and expose him as the charlatan that he was.
nymph veal, local production! Jori, from the lab, the one who was expecting—laid over a hundred eggs last week. Her house is like an insane asylum, baby nymphs crawling everywhere! She prepared some of the weaker ones for everyone in the department. You know they go bad so quick once they are dead, and it’s such a waste to just let them rot…”
When Ms. Khchshi returned with Quozo’s plate, he had already opened the window and jumped out.
Quozo buzzed down toward the parking lot, landing smoothly beside his car. He opened the door while his delicate wings folded back under their keratinous protective shells and flung himself onto the driver’s seat.
Professor Gaudan built his career in archaeology around sensationalist claims about the Travula Murals. While an admittedly puzzling find and an interesting archaeological treasure, they were very far from proving his ideas of a super-advanced ancestral race. The idea of them coming from the stars to Tropis to mine for gold and rare-earth elements, ridiculous!
Nevertheless, this was, for Gaudan, ‘their’ theory, the answer to the missing link problem that puzzled
Quozo let the comm slug go, picked up his camera, and stuffed his briefcase with notepads and papers. He was trying to press the briefcase closed with paper sticking out on all sides when the secretary scraped at his door, peering around the threshold.
“Ms. Khchshi, I gotta fly. Professor Gaudan is up to something at Travula Ridge. I can’t leave him unsupervised.”
“What about lunch? I brought it for you, special.” She turned to pick up Quozo’s lunch from her desk. “It’s
Travula Ridge was about an hour’s drive from the University of Liaria, where Quozo and Professor Gaudan taught. Lots of time to reflect on the professor’s words, and how to entrap him.
In his dissertation, Quozo had indeed discussed the hypothesis that Hexapoda may have originated somewhere else, their first ancestors having arrived in Tropis only about thirty million years ago, already in an advanced stage of evolutionary development. On its face, it seemed like a plausible idea, given the evidence.
But for now, at least, it was only one hypothesis among many, and one wrought with difficulties and contradictions that would have to be worked out in the light of more solid empirical data. This had been Quozo’s conclusion on the topic. It hadn’t changed in the years since he published his work.
Professor Gaudan, however, repeatedly misappropriated Quozo’s
research and distorted his words to serve his own purposes. To him, Quozo’s work had been nothing more than another proof of his own preposterous pet theory about an ancient master race from the stars, as corroborated by the notorious Travula Murals.
The large metal plaques found at Travula Ridge, a few of them inscribed with strange symbols and indecipherable strings of characters (hence the name ‘Travula Murals’), were indeed intriguing. They created quite a sensation ever since Professor Ewedo of the Academy of the Southwestern Alliance first dug one up almost thirty years ago.
This first mural was about four antennae high and seven wide and contained a series of twelve characters separated into three groups of four. It became known as the ‘Tut Mural’ because the first three characters resembled the Liarian characters ‘T-U-T’. Another prominent mural depicted something reminiscent of a planet’s silhouette being circled by a moon. By now, archaeologists had discovered several such metal artifacts on and around the ridge.
Professor Gaudan made sure that a big ruckus in the media accompanied each discovery. But no one was any closer to solving the Travula Murals’ mystery. The alphabet used didn’t seem to be related to any of the known Tropian languages.
Also, the soil around Travula Ridge seemed to have an unusually high concentration of rare-earth elements. But to go from this to assuming that modern roaches descended from a highly developed race of seven-antennae-tall aliens that landed on Tropis thirty million years ago… It was simply ludicrous. It contradicted most of the evidence of their species’ evolutionary history.
The oldest known representatives of Hexapoda were much smaller and less developed than even most present-day hexapods. Moreover, their skeletal structure, being what it was, made it impossible for creatures like them to grow much larger than they were. And certainly not seven or eight antennae tall, as
with a curt bow and handed Quozo a cucumbrella to protect him from the scorching sunlight.
Quozo tickled the zoophyte up and down its elongated shaft, causing it to become rigid and project a set of webbed appendages from its top extremity.
“I’m, Igit, Professor Gaudan’s assistant,” the young male said. He is waiting for you down at the camp.”
Quozo hastily thanked the youth while stretching his wings, which had become numb during the car ride. He then projected himself into the air and flew off toward the dig, holding the cucumbrella over his head with one of his front legs while carrying his briefcase with another.
Gaudan suggested. Such creatures would be monsters that contradicted the very laws of physics!
It was true, too, that the position of the so-called murals within the strata suggested they were extremely old. They were millions of years older than the clay tablets of More Zema, which up to then had been the oldest documented writings by roaches. In fact, the murals were probably about as old as the oldest fossil records of hexapods, which were coincidentally discovered in the Urd Desert, close to where the ridge was located.
Quozo was almost curious to see what new ‘proof’ the professor had cooked up this time.
When Quozo parked his car near the short trail that led into the valley at the base of Travula Ridge, a young roach came out of the shade of a large nearby rock to greet him.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Olb,” he said
The assistant followed, struggling to keep up with Quozo as his still underdeveloped wings allowed only short erratic bursts of flight.
Already, from a distance, Quozo could see the devastation. The landslide riddled half of the camp with dirt and rubble that slid down from the ridge’s side. Broken rocks and dusty tools lay about among stacks of wooden crates.
Approaching the site, the auditory receptors on Quozo’s abdomen perked up. Loud humming and crashing noises came from the top of the ridge. Some kind of heavy machinery was operating up there. Clouds of dust rose skyward.
“What’s going on up there?” Quozo demanded when the young male landed beside him at the entrance of the ruined campsite. He took out his camera and documented the deplorable state of the surroundings.
Out of breath, Igit panted, “They’re digging something up.”
Quozo slipped the camera back into his pocket and stared at the young roach with suspicion. Despite his exhaustion, his eyes seemed to glitter with enthusiasm.
“I don’t know what it is,” the assistant continued, “but Professor Gaudan says it’s huge! This morning he flew up there with a balloon and—”
“Huge, eh? A balloon, you say? What’s this nonsense, young nymph? Don’t you see? The professor is crazy! I would have expected more of an archaeology student like yourself…” He bristled with anger. “Take me to Professor Gaudan. We don’t have a moment to spare. The fool is destroying the site!”
Igit gave him a confused look. “This way,” he mumbled before taking off again with Quozo on his hind tarsi.
This was preposterous. The professor really crossed the line this time. How had he even gotten these machines here when the site was supposed to be locked down? All highly irregular, no doubt. And who could tell how many historic treasures he was destroying at this very moment? This was the final straw. The University provost should certainly hear about this and undoubtedly revoke his tenure!
“Professor,” Quozo said as soon as he laid eyes on the old roach, “with all due respect, what do you think you’re doing? This has got to stop immediately. I will contact the—”
“Dr. Olb! Finally!” Professor Gaudan exclaimed. “Have a seat, my young friend,” he added, pointing to a chair near the entrance. “Would you like some heavy syrup on ice? It’s quite refreshing in this heat.”
For a split second, Quozo hesitated, struck by the professor's carefree demeanor. ‘Typical Liarian behavior,’ he thought.
As a Southerner from the Rubdza mega-nest, Dr. Olb never quite adjusted to the casual atmosphere of Liarian society. His orderly nature was averse to the Liarian’s lifestyle, which he perceived as lax and
said, turning to Quozo, “old friend, sit down, hear me out, will you?”
Quozo let himself down on the chair and glared at the professor. “There. I’m sitting. Now, will you please tell those people to stop drilling? They’re destroying irreplaceable artifacts!”
“Let’s discuss this as adults, shan’t we? The landslide,” he continued between puffs, without removing the pipe from his mouth, “uncovered something quite extraordinary. We’re just finishing what nature started.”
“Ruining the dig, you mean?” Quozo snapped, unable to contain himself.
“No, my boy. Quite the opposite.”
The professor sighed, producing another cloud of smoke. “The thing is, we were approaching the problem on an inadequate—scale, so to speak. Our usual hammers and brushes wouldn’t do the trick.”
chaotic. He wouldn’t allow this old relic—this criminal—to belittle him. After all, the professor had dug his own grave here, literally. There was no need to keep up appearances any longer.
Moments later, they arrived at a dirty tent that had once been white. Quozo stretched the cucumbrella and the ribs of its star-shaped canopy retreated into their slick green sheath.
“Wait for me here,” he told the assistant as he handed it back to him. It would be good to have a witness.
Pushing aside the flaps at the tent’s entrance, he marched in.
Professor Gaudan waited for him on a folding chair, the inseparable pipe stuck between his mandibles. His dark, lackluster shell made him hard to spot in the half-lit interior.
“No, thank you,” he replied in an exasperated tone. “I don’t want any syrup. I want answers!”
“I beg your pardon, calm down. It’s a hot day. Igit! Now where is that roach?” Gaudan exclaimed, and immediately his junior assistant appeared at the entrance. “Get Dr. Olb a bowl of syrup, will you? And bring that chair for him to sit.”
Igit took the folding chair that was standing by the entrance and set it up next to Quozo before scurrying back out of the tent, his delicate wings buzzing obsequiously.
“Now please,” Professor Gaudan
“How so?”
“Surely you remember my theory about the ancestral race being much larger than us?”
“Of course, of course.” ‘How could I forget?’ he added in thought.
“I can see from your expression that you, like most people, don’t give it much credence.”
“I—”
The professor waved his front legs in a placative gesture. “No need to excuse yourself. The evidence for it was mostly circumstantial, based mainly on the size and curvature of the murals, which I assumed, as you know, to be part of the beings’ spaceship.”
“Yes, yes, I know all that. Get to the point, will you?”
“Well, it turns out that, in fact, I miscalculated.”
“I’m glad to see you’re admitting a mistake for once,” Quozo remarked with some glee.
“Yes, it turns out that these ancient beings are actually much larger than even I imagined.”
Quozo’s antennae twitched in surprise. “Larger?”
Just then, Igit returned with Quozo’s syrup. He accepted it and savored the sticky sweetness with his maxillary palps before shoving an enormous chunk of ice into his mouth and crushing it with his strong mandibles. The ice sliding down his hypopharynx soothed him. Turns out, he felt quite thirsty, after all.
“Thank you, Igit,” the professor told his assistant. “Now please ask Mr. Douran to get the balloon ready. We’ll be going up again with Dr. Olb in a few minutes.”
“And what’s this nonsense about a balloon?” Quozo asked, looking up from his bowl. “Did you get too old to fly by yourself or what?”
“I thank you for your concern. I can assure you, these old buzzers are as good as ever,” the professor said, briefly fluttering the crusty brown shell on his back. “But we can’t get high enough flying on our own.”
“High enough for what?”
“So far, we approached the issue based on what we know about life and evolution. On this entire planet, hexapods are the only creatures with a skeleton. A structure that allows us to support our weight, etc. You know the story.”
“Yes, of course.”
“All other animal life on Tropis lacks this characteristic. They cannot grow beyond a certain size. That’s why we are among the biggest land animals around.”
“Yes, yes, I know that...”
“But even we would be crushed by gravity if we were only fifty percent bigger than we are. We wouldn’t be able to fly or even move. This was always a stumbling block for my theory.”
“Yes, yes. Now please get to the point!”
“Don’t be so impatient.” Professor
Gaudan took the pipe out of his mouth, tapped it a few times against the chair’s leg, and filled it up again with fresh charque leaves.
“I’m sorry, but we are losing precious time here while your crew destroys what’s left of the site!” Quozo urged, pointing frantically towards the tent’s exit.
The old roach rummaged through his pockets, clearly unfazed by his colleague’s apprehension. Finally, he produced an emberworm and lit his pipe again.
“I can understand your concern. But hear me out. Apparently, this ‘extra-tropian’ race had skeletons, too. But of an entirely different nature from ours. From what I have
observed, their skeletons seem to be calcareous and grow inside their bodies, not outside—an ‘endo-skeleton’, so to speak.”
“A what? What do you mean, inside their bodies?”
“Well, it just so happens that we’ve been standing right on top of such a skeleton for quite a while.”
Quozo stared at Gaudan incredulously. A gleam of excitement
seemed to pass over the old roach’s otherwise dingy compound eyes.
“The ridge, Dr. Olb! The ridge itself…”
“Is a skeleton?”
“Well, not exactly. There are layers of sediment on top of it, of course. But yes, the peculiar porous rock we’ve been chipping away at for years in the search for fossil remains turned out to be itself a fossil!”
“A fossil of an ancient creature from the stars? As big as the whole of Travula Ridge?”
“Well, he—or she—is in there all right. We had already unwittingly exposed some of it during our previous excavations, but the landslide removed much of the sediment covering it up. It was the head that gave it away. I saw it when I first flew over the site after the disaster. Way too symmetrical for a natural rock formation.
“I doubted it myself at first until we got on the balloon this morning and I observed it from a proper distance.” The professor waved his front legs enthusiastically. “It’s beautiful!” he exclaimed. “We’re now working to uncover the remaining portions of it. It will take a while, but there’s no doubt about what we found here.”
Quozo slurped up the remains of his syrup while Professor Gaudan went on speaking about his find. Could the old roach be making all of this up?
To what end? Maybe he had gone mad, after all? The story was too absurd to be believed. He was at a loss for words. If nothing else, from the balloon, he could at least document the devastation Gaudan and his accomplices were causing to the site.
So when the professor invited him to go up, he only nodded silently and allowed himself to be led out into the open.
Back in his office, still covered in dust from the dig, Quozo munched on his cold nymph veal, musing about the afternoon’s events. He still couldn’t believe his eyes.
The old roach was right, after all: the truth the landslide uncovered was much stranger than even Professor Gaudan’s fantasies about an ancient race of giant roaches. The creature they had seen from the balloon was nothing like them. Although they did share with roaches the distinctive trait of bilateral symmetry.
‘Two eyes,’ Quozo pondered, ‘but no antennae. Four limbs instead of six, and no sign of wings. Although these might not have survived.’
But the most intriguing part was the skeleton itself. Its slender form and solid structure suggested an ‘endo-skeleton’, as Professor Gaudan called it. Perhaps this allowed it to grow much larger than any hexapod ever could.
Quozo tried to imagine what the giant must have looked like. What eyes filled those huge round sockets? What kind of tissue covered those strange, elongated bones? He thought about the row of teeth lining the wide horizontal opening that must have been the creature’s mouth. If that great mouth could speak, what would it tell him? Where did it come from? How could this be the missing link?
color.
He scraped at it with the tip of his boot. The Dappy’s gelatinous innards formed a crust that looked like it would be hard to remove. It was high time to call pest control.
Then a funny thought came to him. Could it be that these creatures, these giants, hadn’t intentionally brought their ancestors to Tropis? Could it be that primitive hexapods infested their ships? That the Tropi-
Quozo’s little insignificant ancestors thrived in this new environment. They evolved over millions of years, giving rise to a group of animals as diverse as any other natural to Tropis. From the majestic sea bug to the modest six-legged desert skipper, they conquered the entire planet and ultimately produced the one intelligent species who now ruled it. A species that one day may build its own spaceships and set out to conquer the stars: his own species, Periplaneta sapiens…
On one point, at least, Professor Gaudan must have been correct: the so-called murals had to be pieces of a spacecraft. An advanced, space-faring species… But where did roaches come in? Clearly, they didn’t descend from this race of slender giants with big round heads.
Still lost in thought, Quozo caught sight of the remains of the Dappy he obliterated earlier that day. The soft body was mush. Its bright purple faded into a sickening brownish
an hexapods including himself, Dr. Quozo Olb, evolutionary biologist, were actually—pests? Annoying little parasites that hitchhiked across the galaxy with this noble race of giants?
Whatever the giant back at Travula Ridge planned to do on Tropis thirty million years ago, it failed. It died, leaving no offspring. Indeed, it left no trace at all, apart from its own fossilized remains and some scattered pieces of engraved scrap metal.
Quozo chuckled at the irony of this notion. He looked out the window past the parking lot, at the smoggy mega-nest on the horizon and then back at the crushed Dappy on the floor in front of him.
‘Or maybe, he thought, ‘if things keep going as they are, maybe someday, the dappies will rule the planet instead of us. Perhaps thirty million years from now, a Dappy archaeologist will stumble upon my own fossilized remains and puzzle over them. They are quite resilient little creatures, after all…’
The loud honking of the desk’s comm slug woke Quozo from his ruminations. It was Ms. Khchshi, reminding him to lock the door when he left.
After bidding his secretary a good evening, Quozo looked at his watch. It was already past six. He was supposed to get groceries on the way home.
He got up, picked up his briefcase, and flicked off the lights. Stepping out of the office, he hesitated for a moment, squeezing the doorknob. He then switched the light back on, strode back to his desk, drew a pen from his mesothorax pocket, and jotted down a couple of words on a sticky pad, which he then stuck to his desk lamp.
In big bold letters, it said: CALL PEST CONTROL!!!
By Hojack, Celestial Envoy to Earth: Witness
Hilarious
The Planetary Communiqué is a section reserved for the dissemination of official intergalactic communications from our galactic overlords to the subjugated planets and territories. The editorial staff does not endorse or hold opinions regarding the content of such communications. Frankly, we lost several of them who did! Therefore, Hojack requires compliance with all opinions and edicts issued by the Galactic potentate and its politburo.
Oh, you marvelous creatures of Earth, how your feeble minds balloon with panic at the sight of tiny hovering gizmos! From my astral palace, I, Overlord Grawth, feast on the absurd delight of your “drone crisis” along that prized eastern fringe of your North American landmass. The entire galaxy trembles with giggles at how quickly you leap from “Hmm, that’s odd” to “Sound the alarm and scramble the jets!” Truly, if confusion were currency, you would be the wealthiest civilization in the cosmos.
Hojack’s Bewildered Field Notes
Allow me to share the baffled observations of my loyal envoy to your world, Hojack, who has filed an official report dripping with exasperated astonishment. Hojack notes how your finest human leaders fret over these whirring contraptions, all while insisting they are harmless. Some say they’re just hobbyist toys, others rant about foreign intrigue—Hojack can barely keep a straight face while dictating.
Your collective jumpiness makes him blush with secondhand embarrassment. If only you could see yourselves through his many-lensed eyes, bumbling about, pointing fingers at each other and at literal twinkling stars you’ve mistaken for mechanical spies!
I particularly savor the overblown
pomposity of your public officials, all vying to deliver the grandest proclamations and “urgent briefings.” It’s as if each believes their dramatic performance will garner cosmic accolades. Your generals shrug, your politicians clam up or babble nonsense, and your advisors plead for composure. Meanwhile, the rest of us—cosmic denizens with actual composure—enjoy a front-row seat to
this theatrical farce. Your attempts at unity and logic have all the elegance of a herd of caffeinated llamas.
By the authority vested in me by countless star systems, I now issue these royal Edicts to guide your muddled earthling flock:
Edict of Proportionate Panic
Limit your hysterics to a maximum of three (3) shrieks per drone sighting. Any additional shrieking requires a formal request and two forms of cosmic ID.
Edict of Confusion Containment
Should you spot a suspicious light in the sky, consider the radical possibility it might be a plane, a star, or even a misplaced streetlamp. Hojack insists you try all sensible explanations before summoning the entire U.S. Air Force.
Edict of Envoy Entertainment
Henceforth, you shall provide Hojack, my esteemed envoy, with complimentary amusement in the form of late-night talk shows and public hearings that go nowhere. He’s developed a fondness for your political soap operas and requires a steady supply.
Edict of Logical Engagement
If you must “investigate”
every last flicker, do so with at least a modicum of dignity. Flailing about in panic only encourages my grand empire to send more observers to relish your circus.
Obey these Edicts, and perhaps your drone “crisis” shall subside to a mere titter in the cosmic record. Disregard them, and we will continue to watch, enthralled, as you dance yourselves dizzy beneath your own high-strung imaginations. The choice, dear humans, is yours. And please, do not shoot the drones. We've had to put down several uprisings on the Outer Rim as alien nations have complained of service disruptions. This despite the recommendations of your Commander in Chief, as it deprivesour citizens of reflexive flatulence from laughter.
So, there you have it, my delightful Homo sapiens—your frantic fluttering over a few buzzing knickknacks, thoroughly aired out under my cosmic scrutiny. As you flock from closed-door briefings to hysterical town hall rants, may you find comfort in the knowledge that I, Overlord Grawth, and my honorable envoy Hojack are eternally grateful for the show. Honestly, if galactic comedy clubs gave awards for best slapstick, your entire species would sweep the category. So carry on, Earthlings, drone on about your drones, and remember: we’ll be up here, enjoying the riotous spectacle of your next cosmic knee-jerk reaction. After all, it’s cheaper than interstellar cable.
End transmission.
by Keith 'Doc' Raymond
I’ve been trying to interview an author from my homeland for a while. But most Austrian writers are bent toward the literary with ponderous prose, complicated and slow plots, and not much happening on the outside but plenty on the inside. And… they write in German.
Erik R. Andara, on the other hand, while up to this point continues to write in German, is having his first novel translated into English this year. And it’s a doozy! In the following interview, I will ask him more about Im Garten Numen (In the Garden of Divinity -Numen is God or divinity in Latin).
Erik was born in Krems an der Donau, and studied philosophy, then journalism, and settled on the dramatic arts at the University of Vienna. In 2000, he graduatxed and opted to make a life in Vienna.
This led to full-time work in a variety of odd jobs while he pursued the arts. He found himself trapped between the visual arts and writing, and for a while combined both, writing poetry and drawing in a comic series in 2007 called Frank-Everyone Carries His Own Curse in collaboration with
a colleague at Artemsis-Kunstverlag.
During that time, he made ends meet by working in a tattoo parlor. The path laid out before him, however, was not as exciting as he envisioned. This ended his oscillations between drawing and writing and now he focuses exclusively on his writing.
While Erik writes full time, he still supplements his income as a social worker part time, performing street work and serving the marginalized people in need of support. (In the last five years, the population of Austria grew by twenty-five percent, made up almost entirely by refugees).
To look at him, one would think he is a more handsome Jason Momoa. When he reads to his fans at Villa Fantastica, he has the same deep resonant voice that gives folks shivers, if the stories alone do not.
I’m delighted to interview you today, Erik, if I can call you that. And I’ll use the familiar per du, rather than the formal per Sie. My first question, as a speculative fiction writer: what genre do you focus on? And how is it similar to and differ
from science fiction?
Well, that's not so easy to answer. I would most likely describe myself as a writer of magical realism, but I also have both feet firmly planted in Horror and Weird fiction. There was once a major Austrian literary form that simply called itself ‘Phantastik’. A word that can be translated into English, but the reference is missing because ‘Fantastic Literature’ could easily be misconstrued. ‘Phantastik’ simply means more than ‘the real,’ it has everything
in it: Fairy tales, Chills, Eerie and Strange Literature, Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction... in the case of Austrian writers before and after the turn of the 19th century, however, this has always meant that they have a clear penchant for the dark and morbid.
Franz Kafka was among them, for example. People still know him internationally. They categorized the whole thing as Romantic Literature, from which the Third Reich also drew and used ‘Phantastik’ for propaganda purposes. But once the horrors of the Nazi era were over, this type of literature became passé because it was associated with the Third Reich.
It was difficult to pick up where it left off, because the genre has mainly ended up in the Pulp and Trash sections in German-speaking countries and in their literature. (Consider Perry Rhodan’s Pulp science fiction found on the bottom shelf in the Tabak Trafik.) As such, ‘Phantastik’ clearly distanced itself from the Nazis. To this day, I'm working with my wonderful Darmstadt based publishing house, Night train, to ensure that I don’t stray in that direction. And hopefully, my work doesn't drift into the other derogatory genre.
In one of my first reviews, they compared me to the classic Austrian Phantasten (Alfred Kubin among them, primarily known as an illustrator and painter, but who also wrote one great novel in this tradition) and it was predicted that I and a few others might make this type of literature acceptable again. And precisely under this label: ‘Phantastik’. Not under ‘Magical Realism’, which is also a recognized literary form in Austria.
Of course, this is and remains a mere prognosis, and the road to bringing ‘Phantastik’ back into various German-language literary feuilletons is a long and rocky one. It remains to be seen how our generation of authors will succeed.
Until then, I like to claim that I write Weird Fiction, because it comes closest to what I do and aim for. Weird Fiction combines all the elements of speculative literature and adds the component of atmosphere and the unknowable. So I'm probably somewhere in between: Weird Fiction, Magical Realism, and Literary Horror... in my short stories. I also like to dabble in the New Weird or Slipstream genres. Some critics have labeled me a ‘Phantastischer Realist’ in this country. That's also a description I like.
You went through some tough times developing your writing chops (skills). How many novels did you pen before you had your first one published? And what happened to the others?
Ha ha ha! Yes, I have a few unpublished manuscripts up my sleeve. I've been writing for almost twenty years now.
Let me tell you a little story: Twenty years ago, I put 497,000 drops of my heart and soul on paper, and typed the handwritten manuscript on my then-workplace computer during night shift breaks. Simply because I couldn't afford a word processor; I then invested my holiday money in fifty hard copies of the manuscript and postage instead of buying a second-hand PC, to submit them to publishers. I got fewer rejections than expected, simply because most publishers never responded.
Four months later, disappointed but hopeful, I set to work on the manuscript for my second novel—handwritten again, of course, because a computer was still not within my means. But this novel wouldn’t be published either, nor the one after that, nor the one after that…
Driven on by the sheer willpower to succeed.
Exactly! So what did I do? I simply refused to accept rejection. I just kept going, on and on.
Everything that I am today—and yes, as the author I am today, can be judged by the hecto-liters of lifeblood I poured into the pages since then. It is not because of the potential lack of those notable publications—I credit my success to where it all started with that first (from today's perspective, unpublishable) manuscript.
And if I hadn't been so stubborn, I might have given up on them. But I'm glad things turned out differently. I published my fourth novel last year. I've now written fourteen novel manuscripts, but only started publishing them in 2018. And I'm also very glad that I had lots and lots of practice when my debut novel called ‘In the Garden of Numen’, which is scheduled for publication in English, had a certain quality and therefore offered the reader good impact.
The other novel manuscripts and stories I wrote before that will probably remain in the closet drawer. I don't think it makes sense to go back and look at what I wrote. They all had a big heart attached, but I’m glad I had the practice.
Wow! And then, success! What inspired you to write Im Garten Numen? Is there any basis for the characters and locations from the book in real life?
Yes, I was both amazed and happily surprised by the response I received from ‘Im Garten Numen’ in German-speaking countries, after its publication. It wasn't a bestseller or on any top sales lists or anything like that, but I got some fantastic reviews and feedback and suddenly had a name among readers in and outside the German-speaking Phantastik scene.
I have to say that ‘Im Garten Numen’ was a very calculated book by nature. I had read a lot of classic fantasy in preparation and tried to take basic motifs from Folk Horror, Weird Fiction and classic horror literature and give
them a fresh twist.
I chose the classic story about a city dweller who comes to a small village in the Waldviertel (which is in the north of Austria and is a very rugged and sparsely populated region) in search of his lost daughter. And then I added drug addiction, a tendency towards violence and modern means of communication, such as WhatsApp and social media. I often joke that I am perhaps the only horror author who always has a good mobile phone connection almost everywhere the story takes me.
In any case, I looked at what happens when I brought these elements of both classic and modern memes together, then added the speculative elements to see if they could actually flow. As if it were possible to connect to an Elder God through a drug disorder, be it psychiatric or real.
As I said, I tried to work in as controlled a way as possible. A small village like this in the Waldviertel (which doesn't really exist under the name Fugenschlag, but could well be) offers the advantage of fewer characters, less external influence and very clear social structures. This allowed me to concentrate more on the characters and follow them in depth.
It was funny that the book, which features a priest with a certain affinity for intravenous drug use who runs an addiction therapy center for young people, touched on reality. Six years after I published the novel, the polizei arrested a priest in the region I described for running a meth lab in his parish. Reality does follow fiction sometimes.
Can you give our SavagePlanets readers a hook (synopsis) of the novel Im Garten Numen, to whet their appetite to buy it when it comes out in English? Or for those who read German?
Simon Heyman, a former drug addict, with a currently suppressed
but still very pronounced tendency towards violence, comes to a small village in the Waldviertel because his daughter was last seen there. He cannot believe the accusation against his daughter, which states that she broke the law while under the influence of drugs and they admitted her to a church-run cold turkey center at her mother’s request.
However, as it soon turns out, Simon probably knew his daughter less than he would have liked. In addition, things are not going according to plan at the therapy center for addicted young people. Chaplain Horak pursues his own interests and celebrates strange masses under the church together with the inhabitants of Fugenschlag, which awakens something deep inside Simon. Something he thought he had gotten rid of years ago. And it all seems to be connected to a very, very old cult that pays homage to a long-forgotten god called the Conqueror Worm.
To reveal more would spoil the story.
But in principle, the story is about addiction in all its forms, and addresses how it can be both a disease and a curse, but also offers a promise of salvation that one must achieve to survive.
Making Chaplain Horak the conduit to evil is an interesting choice. And the Conqueror Worm’s psychic influence on the rehab congregates is frankly chilling. Simon Heyman (the hero in search of his daughter, Katharina) is both drawn and repulsed by this ‘church.’ How did you manage the juggling act Simon must endure? And what sort of concerns do you have in translating the novel from German to English?
I wanted to include what Horak represents in the book as a priest because I wanted to address all the different approaches to addiction there are. And we should not underestimate the psychological impact of what makes an addiction an addiction.
There is a famous saying that religion is the opiate of the masses, and I can take a lot from that. Being a believer means being certain of many things that can torment non-believers in their uncertainty. It means maintaining the illusion of control and predictability over one's life. And opioid addiction, in particular, often stems from the fact that initially, one desires to suppress the pain and, later, there is no desire to confront it again.
You want to control the pain. And religion is perhaps something similar. You first seek refuge in a community knowing that they can control your suffering and later you discover you are not wanting to deal with the fact that what you have to believe in is not all you wanted, but is required in order to belong. Religion may not contain the all-encompassing promise of salvation that you yourself want to believe. Doubting this means having to face it again, having to endure the pain and suffering.
I intended something similar with Simon's portrayal and journey to Fugenschlag and beyond, toward the Conqueror
Worm. Simon has come to the village convinced he has beaten his addiction. But once Chaplain Horak takes his security away from him bit by bit, represented by what he believes he knows about his daughter Katharina and what he is, he gradually finds it is a bitter mistake, and his addiction raises its ugly head again.
The drug addiction offers him security. He knows what it is, how to deal with it and what triggers it. It gives him the illusion of control, an instrument for pain control that he previously experienced. He knows what it means to him, and how it felt before and how he also survived the journey. He believes
he will again.
It is a quasi Terra Firma, as strange as that may sound, from the outside. Even consciously letting go of some of the control and knowing what comes next helps him. Better the demon you know than the great unknown. The balancing act for me as a narrator was to give him and the reader his illusion of control, to let the characters relinquish it bit by bit and to make their certainty believable. To show he was merely replacing one kind of control with another.
Revier inspector says his daughter, Katharina, is in Vienna, he doesn’t try calling her, or contacting her mother, Monika to see if it’s true. Is this a character flaw, or does he suspect he is being gas-lighted by those around him?
We're in spoiler territory here, so I'll keep my answer short. Simon and his relationship with his ex-wife Monika is a topic in and of itself. But why he doesn't do certain things and why he doesn't know certain things, which for a reader often makes them beg the question: WHY, is probably also part of his struggle for control.
As long as he knows, or at least thinks he knows, WHY his daughter does the things she does, he has control over what happens. As soon as he makes sure that what he believes is really justified, he leaves this area of control. He would depend on what others say and tell him and would thus perhaps confront the fact that he has nothing under control. And that he himself has a massive problem.
It’s not just the others who are trying to convince him, though. When he relies only on his beliefs and his own experience from his own hard earned realizations in Fugenschlag, Simon finds he has to confront the uncertainty that he is perhaps completely powerless. Maybe he has done something wrong, right from the start. That Monika and Katharina have deliberately distanced themselves from him for that reason. And the knowledge of this could hurt him is more than he can cope with. So why risk having to deal with it in the first place?
would like to say that the devil is in the detail. And to have a devil in such stories would be more than desirable. Of course, I realize that this saying means something completely different, but I can also use it here to answer your question: the devil is in the details.
We all associate our lives with more details than we might realize at first glance. Countless details form our environment, determine how we perceive it, perhaps even without us always consciously realizing it. So I focus on details in my storytelling because I believe they are the quintessence of the connection between reader and story.
To bring a story to life, to experience and feel it, the details have to fit. For me as a reader, it is always particularly important that I can feel what it means to be alive in the story. To be fully exposed to it. And often, the signposts and buoys to get there get buried within the details. Just as we perceive our surroundings in real life, even if we consciously filter out those details to orient ourselves, they are still present. And yes, I think that's a trademark of my stories. I believe they are my means of evoking not just settings, people and things in the mind's eye, but also of clearly conveying the atmosphere of a particular environment and situation.
And while we are on the subject, please introduce our readers to your other novels, Die Erloschenen, Der Holmgang, and Der Alte Haus am Nordrand. It is my hope, we will see these novels in English in the future as well!
There are some obvious things Simon doesn’t do. When the
I noticed in your prose that you have a microscopic attention to detail. Is this to make the story more real for the reader, or is it a style of your writing? And is this present in your other novels, or was this specific to Im Garten Numen?
As a writer of horror stories, I
Die Erloschenen is about a social worker who is traveling the streets of Vienna in the near future to look after the so-called Erloschenen. These are people possessed by entities that come to Earth via transmissions from a black hole at the other end of
the universe. By tapping into the unknown energy source, humankind has established a permanent connection to this black hole, from which the Moderator regularly broadcasts his terrifying television program.
Victor Neidhart, that’s the name of the social worker, encounters his deceased lover and must come to terms with the guilt he believes he bears for her death. Die Erloschenen is something like Weird Urban Fantasy for literary-minded adults. It is very much about guilt, self-discovery and belief in the gods or other guiding beings who are above us.
Then there's Der Holmgang, it’s a Sword and Sorcery novel for the role-playing world of Malmsturm, a well-known German pen and paper game. It has everything: great swords, inexplicable magic, nordic barbarians, arrogant and decadent Imperials, monsters without end, and gods who have to interfere everywhere.
Few people know that Sword and Sorcery had a close connection to Weird Fiction in the early days. I have revived this tradition in Der Holmgang. With direct references to genre greats such as Fritz Leiber, Karl Edward Wagner, Robert E. Howard and ultimately too, HP Lovecraft. However, I couldn't resist adding a certain modern spin to describe Der Holmgang itself as postmodern Sword and Sorcery piece. I think I wrote this primarily for adults who can still remember how much fun they had with these kinds of stories as kids.
And then there's Der Alte Haus am Nordrand (The Old House on the Northern Edge). My personal favorite book so far, and also the one in which I could put everything I had learned from my previous books into one big story. The Old House on the Northern Edge is at heart a haunted house story.
It’s about a young woman who flees from her violent partner to the house her father left her, and
with whom she was estranged long before his death. Things are not quite right in the house itself, as it wants to be haunted and understood as such. Her father, who was an archaeologist, brought to Vienna something from the oldest city known to man. It is in what is now known as Turkey.
And the heroine of the story finds herself confronted not only with her violent ex-boyfriend and the ghost of her brother who died many years ago in the Yugoslavian war, but also her father's former business partner. He traveled all the way from Turkey, and claims to be the true owner of the old house on the northern edge. The young woman finds him following her throughout the strange corridors of the house ever since she arrived.
Der Alte Haus am Nordrand is about the violence we inflict on each other, especially on the supposedly weaker members of our society. It is about the top down violence we inflict and how we learn to avoid seeing it when we witness it, so as not to interfere. All these stories are standalone novels and yet take place in the same universe. This quickly becomes clear through certain details and individual charac-
ters that pop up from time to time. I'm also planning to publish a novella called ‘Severin Finkenstein and the End of Everything’ in ten or twelve years' time, which will have a few explanations of why I chose this universe. Not all the explanations, of course. Because what kind of magician and writer would I be if I gave away all my secrets?
I’d like to switch gears now and talk about your writing process. You are one of the harshest critics of your own work I’ve met. Many of our SavagePlanets readers are also writers. Tell me what makes a piece of writing bad? What do you look for in a story or book that tells you this isn’t working? And when do you give up, stop fixing it and move on?
Hmm, that's a good question and at the same time, extremely difficult to answer. I think when you've spent as much time with stories as I have, you just know when something works or doesn’t. At least for me, I can claim that as an avid reader. Maybe once I could easily explain why a story works or doesn’t, why I like some things more than others, but nowadays it's hard to pin down.
However, I have learned to listen to my gut. And it's right more often than you would think. I'm an insanely slow writer precisely because I follow such feelings while I'm at it. If I realize what I'm writing isn't working, no matter what stage it's at, I go back and fix it, improve it. And I’m not even talking about logical errors or research mistakes or facts that simply don't add up. The professional editors and critical beta readers I work with are my safety net if I miss something. But I'm
talking more about the gut feeling I have from the very beginning.
For example: Why doesn't the character or dialogue feel alive? Am I repeating myself here? Do I have anything to say on the subject that hasn't already been said previously?
I think that my letting go happens more in my very extensive planning phase. I plan my books meticulously and well in advance: reading up for months, gathering prior knowledge from other authors and ideas on how I'd like to explore these themes, writing meticulous biographies for my characters (only about a third of which I mention in the book, if at all) and planning at least the major plot points.
I never plan the entire plot, just the most essential steps I need to take my characters through it and keep the story under control.
For myself, I've learned that anything else would degrade my characters, turning them into extras. It feels better to let them have a mind of their own, at least to some extent. To experience with them how and why they reach turning points in the story and what that does to them.
But back to the original question: I realize during this planning phase that if a story doesn't work as it should, or that I have nothing new to say about a topic, or that an idea is just that, an idea, nothing more, not a story. Then I let it go.
something doesn't fit from the original idea. Then I go back and back and back to make it fit. At least that's how it's been so far. That doesn't mean that I don't have to throw in the towel once in a while because I’ve reached a dead end. However, I hope that never happens if I plan correctly. I continue to learn with every book. So I can look back and think to myself: Oh, the book I wrote two years ago that I never published, for whatever reason, is really outdated now. That's no longer me. I'm no longer THERE. Then it stays right where it belongs: in the drawer. But that won’t happen to me for a few years. And until it does...
Finally, how has your work strayed from other Austrian authors and what’s next? Are you working on a new novel? Perhaps writing more short stories, or poetry? Do you have audio books planned? And where would you like to see your publications in ten years?
Once I've started writing, I don't give up. Then I see what I have and my gut feeling tells me when
I think one thing that really sets me apart is that I don't shy away from saying that I write Phantastik (Speculative Fiction). And then I don't write this Phantastik as if I'm only writing it for readers of the genre, but for everyone. As if all readers would like to read Phantastik. As I said at the beginning, Phantastik doesn't have an excellent reputation in Austria or Germany.
Many German-speaking colleagues who have access to larger publishers and who actually write Phantastik would never call it that. They don't write Horror, Weird Fiction or Strange Stories, they write fiction. I don't see any difference. That may be a mistake, but oh well. I think if you write Phantastik, then you should be proud of it. I see this particularly in English-speaking countries where there isn't a big difference between non-speculative and speculative fiction. They don’t make a big fuss about it. I want that for us, too.
I don't have any audio books planned at the moment, but if I land a bigger publisher, I'd be more than willing. Even though I will always prefer paper as a reader, I can also see the advantages of other media for storytelling.
And where do I see my books in ten years' time? I hope that by then I will already have all my books published in English. And that I will have written my central novella about Severin Finkenstein. And I still hope that I will still be writing books. It’s the best thing that could ever have happened to me.
Of course, I wouldn't say no if I were to be published by a big publisher. But time will tell. Maybe we'll just talk again in ten years, then I'll be wiser (hopefully).
Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you, Keith. I really enjoyed it! I hope to see you around.
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. It was an absolute pleasure to introduce the SavagePlanets readers to you, an Austrian author. I have no doubt you will be a success not only in Austria, but in all the other English-speaking countries as well. Erik, we wish you a bright future.
by Keith 'Doc' Raymond
A Voyage to Arcturus, written by David Lindsay, and published in 1920 (!), essentially begins after the voyage ends. It sold only 596 copies when it came out. Shelved to the author’s disappointment.
Long after Lindsay died, the hippie generation rediscovered it in the late 1960s and 1970s and the novel took off, reprinted by Gollancz and others. In addition, William J. Holloway produced a black and white film of the adventure, first released in 1979, and re-released in 2006.
Holloway’s film was the first film sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. He made it on a budget of only $15,000, when he was a student at Antioch university, and it shows. It’s actually not good, but it gives you a feel for the book, which is frankly astounding. It is a science fiction that delves deep into earth bound philosophical issues of life and all things. The YouTube link for the full film is: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=b_aQ_WA38ow
Arcturus, directed and written by Phil Moore, led to a musical which was documented in a film in 2020. Sadly, it was equally bad, if not worse. The YouTube link to Act 1 is: https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=bNl3XwAPSMM
Both are available on YouTube, but the 1979 film
out. But the story begins on Earth, and in the opening scene we attend a séance. A wealthy Welshman invites his friends to attend, with the promise that a spirit will materialize during the séance. His wife invites two young men to attend as well, Maskull and Nightspore.
would give you a better taste of the book. To really capture it as intended, A Voyage to Arcturus needs to be done as an animation using original source dialogue.
Maskull is a physical giant. His odd friend, Nightspore, is quiet and obsequious, with a rather flat affect. The medium materializes another young man from Tormance. When he appears, so does an uninvited stranger named Krag, who laughs hysterically, and then strangles the materialized man. In his death throes, he shocks the attendees by smiling. In death, it’s called Crystalman’s grin.
Krag laughs again, and races out, dragging Nightspore and Maskull with him. Krag promises to take them to Tormance, a hundred light years away if they meet him at the Starkness observatory in two nights. He says ominously, ‘Maskull, you will go, but only Nightspore will return.’
Another attempt at a live action production of A Voyage to
So what is all the fuss about? Let’s explore Tormance and find
Maskull believes he is being put on, but investigates the scam
anyway. As he attempts to climb the Starkness observatory tower, he finds he is too weak. He discovers the observatory contains Tormance gravity, and Krag gives him his blood, which allows him the strength to resist Tormance’s gravity, and climb to the top of the tower.
There, the three of them climb aboard a torpedo shaped crystal ship, powered by Arcturus back rays. The back rays are light rays from the star that can whisk them to Arcturus in a matter of hours, nineteen to be exact. He awakes naked and on his back in Tormance on scarlet sand. Barely able to lift his head, he sees in the distance purple trees.
Arcturus is a binary star system in the book, but in truth, it is a lone red giant star. Astronomers know Arcturus packs a lot of punch despite being only about 1.5 times the mass of the sun. To the naked eye, Arcturus appears to shine about 113 times more brightly than the sun. It is the fourth brightest star in the sky.
Back to the novel, looking around Tormance, Maskull doesn’t see Nightspore nor Krag, but a woman is approaching. She tells him the stars are Branchspell (their name for Arcturus) and the smaller blue star is Alppain. She speaks to him telepathically, through a new organ he discovers on his forehead that feels like a cratered plum. He has two more on his neck. Most interesting, he now has a tentacle coming out of his skin from his chest, from his heart. (These are the fashion of Poolingdred.)
Her name is Joiwind, and she transfuses him with her milky opalescent blood, allowing him to withstand the far greater Tormance gravity. And here’s where the voyage ends and the adventure begins. Their first philosophical discussion is about God. On Tormance, the people call God: Surtur, Shaping, Crystal-
man or Faceny. They believe he walks among them. Joiwind can’t understand how people on Earth can believe in God based on faith alone! Makes sense, no?
Joiwind also introduces Maskull to the other colors found only on Tormance. Ulfire, Jale, and Dolm are all primary colors. Although people consider Dolm as a combination of ulfire and blue. She points out examples of them in the plants and animals. Maskull sees fruit lying around and goes to eat it. She cautions him not to.
He wonders if they are poisonous, and she says no. But to put vegans to shame, she states, we do not harm any living being, plant or animal. Which leaves him to wonder how they gain sustenance. She explains they only drink gnawl water, which provides all the nutrients they need.
As he drinks it, Maskull purges all
the ‘impurity’ of Earth, enhancing his perception. Joiwind teaches him about the organs on his neck called poigns. They help him comprehend the intrinsic nature of things. How the fruit feels, its joy and sorrow within its structure. The tentacle from his heart is called a magn. It allows him to connect with people and things empathically and to share their experience of love.
These are the tools that help him throughout the novel to know Tormance on a profound level. And it makes a unique experience for the reader expanding their senses and perception to a greater reality
both by Tormance and on Earth. Together, Maskull and Joiwind walk forty miles to meet Joiwind’s husband, Panawe. Maskull finds him to be irritating. Panawe tells him a story about his childhood. His parents take him, as an ambiguous gender, to the Wombflash forest.
Broodlov, considered the wisest man on Tormance, is over six hundred years old. They find him standing in a ditch in deep thought. A being with three legs, three arms and six eyes arranged equally around his head, thus ever vigilant. His first words to them, ‘To lie is to sleep, to sit is to dream, and to stand is to think.’
Panawe’s parents brought their child to Broodlov because Panawe failed to choose a gender. Broodlov explained all beings are murderers. They kill the woman in them to be a man, or vice versa. Broodlov explained Panawe was still in the fight. But Panawe believed the genders inside him were not fighting, but the woman in him loved the man in him so much that she sacrificed herself for him, and thus he became a man. Which Broodlov promised would happen before they returned to Poolingdred.
The theme of gender ambiguity continues throughout the novel and emerges in different philosophical situations. Lindsay even assigns new pronoun designations, just as people do today. These include gender-neutral pronoun such as, ae, aer, and aerself for the phaen who are humanoid but form from life sparks rising from a river and solidifying in the air. Back in the Wombflash forest, Panawe was challenging the very foundations of our being, and we see this challenge now as intersex individuals declaring their genderless state in society today.
Joiwind points out the Ifdawn Marest, a range of mountains Maskull feels compelled to climb. So he leaves the couple behind, and
while crossing the Lusion Plane, he has a briewith Surtur. Surtur or Shaping tells Maskull he brought him to Tormance to serve him, but doesn’t explain in what way. Then he is gone. Much like on Earth, many religions profess humans are there to serve God, but no religion adequately describes how. Hinting here at the rise of existentialism, where humans must find their own meaning to life.
That evening, Maskull meets Oceaxe, a woman whose breve is a sorb or third eye. Her magn is far more robust, being an arm instead of a tentacle in her chest. She tells Maskull if he is to proceed, he must change his breve to a sorb and have a more robust magn like she has. To do so, she hands him a crystal that he must sleep with, which he does. It will help him in understanding the Ifdawn Marest and its people.
When he wakes, he finds his sorb adds to his ability to see by acting to help him manifest and exert his will. We come to understand that each step in his journey, as in ours, requires a significant change in who he and we are. One that, in his case, is not just mental, but physical. Will it continue?
Oceaxe is far more brutal and willful than Joiwind, a distinct change from the latter’s gentleness. As Oceaxe says, to paraphrase, the folks of Poolingdred want to see the world but not interact with it. Oceaxe demonstrates more manly characteristics or animus. She bends the will of a shrowk, a kind of bird, to fly them to her peninsula home where her husband Crimtyphon awaits. Although she would gladly eat him to be with Maskull.
To his surprise, when he comes upon Crimtyphon, Oceaxe’s husband uses his will in an amphitheater-like arena to turn a man into a tree. This leads to a philosophical discussion of slavery and the unbridled use of power. Reflective of the post WWI times,
Lindsay lived in. It also brings to mind the roots of existentialism, which took off twenty years later.
In the end, Maskull kills Crimtyphon for his cruelty to the man, doing so with malice. He notes the appearance of Crystalman’s smile in his death mask. Then connects it with the séance with Krag’s killing, providing insight into Surtur and Shaping.
The murder excites Oceaxe, which confounds Maskull as she should be in grief. She explains that his preconceptions about life and death are irrelevant in the Ifdawn Marest. That which he thought was a universal truth is not one on Tormance. He must adapt and accept.
When Crimtyphon’s second wife shows up, Tydomin, the latter uses her will to direct Oceaxe to walk off a cliff. She does this not out of grief for her husband, but the fact Oceaxe used a man to murder him. She is righting a wrong, but not directly.
Tydomin tells Maskull Crimtyphon wanted his remains thrown into a burning lake. But he wants to retrieve the dead Oceaxe, which
Tydomin sees no point in doing. Instead, Maskull carries the burden of his murderous act by literally hauling Crimtyphon to the lake. Tydomin said it will bring him redemption, and in a way, it does after he throws the corpse into the chasm where the lake exists.
The couple travel on to Sant. Tydomin is anxious because the Sant men forbid women there. They kill women if they appear. So Sant is like a monastery filled with fanatical men or strict religious monks. But on the way, they encounter a man name Spadevil.
Spadevil doesn’t have a sorb but has two flat pieces of flesh on his forehead called probes. He appears rather dramatically, controlling pillars of lightning. In a way, he is like Jesus or another holy figure. He places a hand over their sorbs, and probes replace them, like he has. The probes, in essence, replace one’s will with the new law of the land that flows into their consciousness. It makes Sant tolerant of a woman’s presence, or so Tydomin hopes.
Spadevil is an iconoclast. He escorts them into Sant as a prophet of a new order. Tydomin remains anxious despite her new understanding, and Spadevil says, “Attach yourself to the truth, not to me. For I may die before you, but the truth will accompany you to your death.” Not particularly comforting, but one kind of thing that could appear in the Bible.
Spadevil describes Sant as they walk. It is a place with men of icy selfishness. The men there hate pleasure, and hating pleasure gives them pleasure. Okay… right? Sant is ruled by the philosophy of Hator. Read hater, there. And Spadevil is on a crusade to repair it.
On the outskirts of Sant, they encounter Cattice. He is the keeper of the faith in Sant. Seeing
the two probes on their heads, they offend him. He challenges Spadevil and his followers. Offers to strike one probe off Tydomin, so she can see the Sant way. Maskull volunteers to have one of his probes removed instead, and Cattice says that if he believes Spadevil’s way is better, then he would follow them in the new faith.
Of course, the blinding of Maskull makes him see the foolishness of the new faith Spadevil offers based on the pleasure of duty. In response, Maskull stares as Cattice kills Spadevil. Cattice then orders Maskull to kill Tydomin, which he does by stoning. This extinguishes the budding of Spadevil’s philosophy. Which is sort of an alternative history to the Jesus story. We hope the new faith may reemerge in another member of Sant, but Maskull never stays to find out if that comes to pass.
Cattice sends Maskull down into the Wombflash forest, there to pursue the drumbeat of Surtur. Exhausted from the previous day’s ordeal, Maskull wakes on the forest floor, disoriented. The trees are immense, a hundred feet in circumference with the forest floor covered with leaves. He notes the probe he had in Sant has turned into a third eye, but unlike a sorb, it provides vision without will.
has only been on Tormance three days, and has been a slave to the will of everyone he encounters. While he at first believed he was traveling based on his own free will, in fact, he was not. This insight begs us to view our own lives and decide if we are truly free, or are simply following the rules of society, our religion, or our bosses.
Passing out of the immense trees of the Wombflash forest, Maskull
on the beach until he is dry.
He finds violet patches where the sand burns along with the orange sand. Dressing, he walks east toward a bend where a river drains into the sea. There he meets Polecrab, a fisherman, and the simplest of people he has met so far.
And yet, they have one of the most erudite of discussions he has on Tormance, about the afterlife, or as they call it, Surtur’s world. Maskull comes to believe this life, both on Earth and Tormance, is not reality but a falsehood. A tenant of many Earth bound religions. Maskull considers taking his own life to hasten his arrival in the true reality.
Polecrab then says something profound yet simple, as is his nature. ‘What if Surtur’s world (the afterlife) is also false, and the true reality is beyond it?’ The simple idea spares Maskull’s present life, and he turns to simpler things like hunger. Polecrab obliges him, offering seafood, cooked while buried in the violet sand.
In the forest, he meets Dreamsinter. A giant, like Maskull, only taller. They follow Surtur’s drumbeat. Then lose it. Dreamsinter throws an image before Maskull of himself, Krag, and Nightspore marching single file in the forest. Maskull stares in horror as Krag kills Maskull, and Nightspore marches on unperturbed. Is it a warning of a potential future? Did Maskull do something wrong?
He contemplates the fact that he
is relieved to find himself on the sand of the Sinking Sea. He needs to wash away all that came before in the sea, and steps into the water. First, he washes his clothes then sets them out to dry. Then swims, only to discover why it has its name.
The density and buoyancy of the water changes unexpectedly as he swims. Sometimes he crawls on the surface and other times he sinks precipitously. There are strong rip tides and pinnacles of water that rise high in the air. He quits the water and walks naked
Polecrab states (rather than asks) Maskull is headed north as he has comes from the south, and then he shares what’s up there. But first, he must visit Swaylone’s island in the middle of the Sinking Sea, where a male siren lives. Polecrab’s wife Gleameil over hears them and wants to go, but the fisherman says it’s too dangerous, especially for women.
Still, Gleameil defies her husband and abandons her children to join Maskull, seeking the source of the music on Swaylone’s island. During the passage, he inquires how it got its name, and Gleameil explains Swaylone was the first musician to play there. Shaping was traveling with Krag when
they heard it. Krag thought the music could be better, despite folks gathering on the shore of the Wombflash forest to listen. So Shaping forced his thoughts into Swaylone, making the music ten times better.
Krag bet he could make it even better. When he acted, the music became powerful and discordant, yet somehow more beautiful. Gleameil explained that while Shaping made Tormance beautiful, Krag came along and remade his creation, altering the world. What Krag added allowed that beauty to be recognized.
‘To love (Krag) joins death, to sex, shame; to intellect, madness; to virtue, cruelty, and to fair exteriors, bloody entrails.’
This is the balance. What we see in nature, to help us understand what and how we appreciate it. They meet Earthrid, the current musician, who kills Gleameil with his playing. Maskull tries his hand with the instrument and kills Earthrid when he plays. He then wanders to the northern shore, contemplating how he will cross the sea to Matterplay.
of these is a spark that rises from the river.
The spark rises into the clouds and, captured in a sphere of vapor, returns to Tormance. When the cloud that imprisoned the spark condenses and they touch the ground, a plant-animal being springs into existence. With his usual eyes, it appears the creature comes out of nowhere. He realizes he is seeing a process no different from the formation of a thought in his mind. A condensation of disparate ideas to become a thought.
Thinking on this, he hears a human calling out to him downriver. He sees a phaen approach. Lindsay goes to great length explaining to the reader what we know a
with God during our lifetime. Yet Leehallfae does not obsess about his nature as many nonbinary’s do, except to say that he encompasses the whole of life. Whereas a man or woman only possesses half of it. Therefore, a phaen is more fulfilled, like Faceny. Ae then discusses how Faceny creates life through the sparks that come from the river.
It seems counterintuitive to Maskull as he approaches the headwaters of the river that there is less and less life. Leehallfae explains that life sparks closer to the source are more energetic and therefore have shorter lives, if at all. Ae says that life springs from Faceny’s thoughts, suggesting all life is within Faceny, and therefore, life is a simulation. Such that the real world is beyond this and out of our reach! Further, matter does not really die but transforms into new matter.
And while he sat on the beach, a log passed by whose eyes showed awareness. Maskull found he could navigate using the log by covering an eye, the other following Branchspell’s light. He directs the log he rides upon into a current heading toward Matterplay. Once he reaches it, as the log follows the current along the beach, Maskull jumps off and swims to shore.
In Matterplay, he wanders up a river that drains into the Sinking Sea. Thirsty, he drinks from the stream, and his vision blurs, and when it returns. When it does, he finds six new eyes, now sprouted on his head. Their purpose, he soon discovers, allows him to see individual particles in motion. One
phaen is today as a non-binary. The phaen have their own pronouns, ae, rather than they and them, the pronouns non-binaries use to describe themselves. This phaen is seeking Faceny, his name for Shaping.
Leehallfae, the phaen, perhaps the last of aer kind, spent aer’s life looking for Aem. Ae believes Maskull will change aer’s fate, whose adventures on Tormance ae uncovered while reading his mind. Together they will venture to the subterranean world of Threal, the only placed where Leehallfae has not looked. This search does not differ from us seeking enlightenment or an encounter
This concept percolating from Einstein’s theories was still new at the time Lindsay wrote the book. And even if Lindsay heard of them (energy is neither created nor destroyed, just transformed), then it was floating around in the collective consciousness of the time. Here, the parallels of ethics and physics seem to align in A Voyage to Arcturus. And while Maskull’s adventures continue, this seems a good place to stop so that you may read the book and see where it ends.
A Voyage to Arcturus is one of those rare books that keeps you thinking about it long after you’ve finished. At least it was for me, coming back and reading it again after all these years, as many other people do. I believe you will find new things about yourself if you take the time to jump onto the back rays that can take you to Arcturus and Tormance.
by Keith 'Doc' Raymond
In 1969, humans walked on the moon, creating excitement about space and speculation on alien invasion. This inspired Reg Hill, Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson to create the British television series UFO. It first appeared in 1970, and spoke of the far distant future: 1980.
And who knows, if we chose peace and exploration over war and devastation, we might have gone to where this series thrived.
The story revolves around alien incursions onto Earth in which they harvest human organs to survive. Their planet is dying because their star has changed and so too has their climate. They cannot last long long in Earth’s atmosphere so they must collect the organs and leave. To combat the alien invasion, which the UN has kept secret from the public, they create a new division.
This division, known as SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization), comprises an international team of scientists, astronauts, and military officers. Headed by Colonel Edmund Straker (Ed Bishop), a Brit who leads from the front. Their headquarters, disguised as a working
movie studio, Harlington-Straker Studios, the UN hides beneath the vast complex.
SHADO is more than a central headquarters, though. It is has tracking facilities, an orbital AI early warning satellite, a moon base with interceptors, moon tractors, and artillery units. Additionally, SHADO features earthbound mobile battle wagons, a submarine capable of launching a jet fighter, and hovercrafts. When seen externally, most of these are animated models, but internal shots are all live action.
Women wearing purple wigs (radiation protection?) run the moon base, while the men do not. The women wear sexy silver uniforms that were later modeled for video games. The men at the moon base primarily fly the interceptors that defend Earth from the incoming UFO. Their function on the moon base is to operate the interceptors, flying and firing a single large warhead, sent out in sets of three. Later in the series they interact with other moon bases on the Moon, including the Russians.
The recurring characters include the physician Douglas Jackson (Vladek Sheybal, the Polish
actor famous for From Russia with Love), Colonel Paul Foster (Michael Billington), Colonel Alec Freeman (George Sewell), Nina Barry (Dolores Mantez), and many others. Some making their debut on the show and going on to fame. What is fun is they are basically Bond girls working beside rugged, handsome men.
The show was unique in that women were in charge in many departments for SHADO. There was a mixed international cast, perhaps emboldened by the original Star Trek series, and they changed Ford Zephyrs into futuristic cars with telephones! Sadly, the UFOs looked like inverted spinning top toys that made an annoying sound and fired lasers at just about anything. But at the time, the viewers saw something new.
The aliens themselves wear red spacesuits with motorcycle helmets. Their skin is green and they wear special contacts to protect their eyes from the sunlight. They cannot breathe our air, and as mentioned previously, they can’t remain on Earth too long, some sacrificing themselves to accomplish their mission. They can use devices to hide from radar, have
booby traps that infect human minds with hallucinations, and can use mind control techniques on the unsuspecting.
There are episodes that take place underwater, in space, on the moon, and on the lot of the movie studio. Gerry Anderson et al. made twenty-seven episodes over two years. People responded positively to the show, and it was popular.
A follow-up series turned out to be a spin-off called Space:1999, and starred Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, both going on to fame in the TV series Mission Impossible. The spin off takes place on the same moon base, with an expanded set, in which the moon is driven out of orbit from the Earth to travel the galaxy. It is equally entertaining, but doesn’t have the old British style UFO has.
In UFO, men smoke cigars and the generals have chauffeurs driving them around in Rolls-Royce. Chauvinism is still common despite more senior women’s roles. The guns have silver silencers, and formal dress requires Nehru jackets.
Here are some of the episode summaries: A man with ESP knowledge of SHADO is co-opted by the aliens; The aliens attack a Royal Navy destroyer that is dumping sealed containers of highly toxic nerve gas in the sea; Straker must face his claustrophobia when the Skydiver submarine is damaged and unable to surface; A UFO freezes time at the studio for everyone but Straker, Colonel Lake and a mysterious enemy; and a woman awakening
from a decade-long coma sparks a hunt for an alien bomb. That one was the last episode of the series.
It all started when Lew Grade approached Gerry Anderson to look into creating his first live-action TV series. Anderson worked with his wife, Sylvia, and producer Reg Hill to create a science fiction adventure series based on UFOs. Anderson said the core idea for the series was that UFO sightings were a common issue during the late 1960s (think crop circles),
der. The studio-as-cover concept served multiple practical and narrative functions: It was simple and cost-effective for the production, it provided an engaging vehicle for the viewer's suspension of disbelief and it eliminated the need to build an expensive exterior set for the SHADO base.
Principal photography began in April 1969, with the production based at MGM-British Studios. Before the end of 1969, the production team filmed seventeen episodes at these studios, which later closed.
and that the idea of aliens harvesting human organs came from the work of Christiaan Barnard and his pioneering transplant operations.
The UFO episodes included serious adult themes such as divorce, drug use, the challenge of maintaining work/family balance, mind control, alien abduction, illegal organ harvesting, and mur-
Pinewood Studios became the new production location in June 1970, allowing for the completion of the final nine episodes and extending the production of UFO to its final seventeen month duration. After the break, George Sewell (who played Colonel Freeman) and Gabrielle Drake (Lieutenant Ellis) were no longer available, and left the series.
The show was so popular that there were international knockoffs. In the US, they couldn’t decide if it was a children's or adults show despite the adult themes. And finally, in 2009, it was announced that producer Robert Evans and ITV Global would produce a feature film adaptation of the series. Ryan Gaudet and Joseph Kanarek were to write the script, which was to be set in 2020. They haven’t made it so far, and likely won’t. But hey, the original series sure is fun to watch, especially if you like good classic science fiction.
by Mark Mellon
He staggered away from the smelter… grasping the rail to steady himself. The knife lay on the catwalk. ‘Yeshoo Ice, this hurts.’"
Locked in synchronous orbit over the Hindoo Zone on the Terra ring, CVΨ16 took on cargo. It shuttled through a plaz-chute extended up from the surface. Burden-bots stowed cyanide, nitric acid, heavy excavating equipment, building material, water, rations, and fourteen prisoners in suspension pods in the capacious hold. After the ship dropped off processed ore, the chute retracted back into the Ring. CVΨ16 gently pulled away, under electric propulsion.
The Ring spun mere kilometers below, the vast plaz sphere that encircled Terra. Different Zones were distinct on the superstructure, the Hiberni Zone blinding green, the white, snow-clad Zlav Zone, and the Darwin Zone’s oddly shifting red
and brown. Operated by AI, with no
CVΨ16 prepared for the high velocity transit, indifferent to the magnificent journey.
The antimatter engine powered
up. Proprietary array moderators injected compact radioisotope sources of positrons into the chamber. They annihilated streams of cold electrons, creating thrust. The ship sped away from the Ring, steadily gaining speed, accelerating at a hundred gees.
Luna slipped by, the major craters covered by the Pocket Lords’ brightly colored plaz domes that pulsed light. In open space, the AI unleashed the raw power of the antimatter engine. It increased thrust until the ship sped up to two million kph, at a lethal two thousand gees. The long, needle-like ship, CVΨ16, shot through the vacuum.
After three Solar units, Mars
loomed ahead, defaced by terraforming’s brown, parallel scars. The two ton synthetic cerebrum that directed the ship slashed thrust. CVΨ16 slipped into Mars’s gravitational pull along a carefully plotted trajectory. As the planet approached, the green fields of the poles became plainly visible.
Powered by Mars’s gravity assist, the ship slingshot toward the Solarplex’s outer limits. The cerebrum vessel fairly exploded outward, hurled from the planet’s orbit as if fired from a cannon. CVΨ16 hit the widening spiral’s second leg at four million kph. The ship decelerated soon after the first solar conjunction way point, only to surge back up to seventy percent of its former velocity. The ship accelerated continuously after that until the Asteroid Belt drew near.
The cerebrum locked coordinates on the destination, an oblong, irregular asteroid that wobbled in the distance, Psyche 16. The antimatter engine shut off. Electric propulsion in retro mode slowed CVΨ16 as it approached the asteroid. Small, black tug drones ascended to guide her in. They attached cables to the ship’s keel and pulled her toward the landing pad.
Psyche 16 was a red-ebony pebble, dimpled and pocked like a bruised potato. The works were deep in the Meroe crater, a circular scar in the irregular asteroid covered by an opaque, white plaz dome. The tug drones cut their cables loose.
A powerful mono-pole magnetic field activated, embedded in the landing pad. CVΨ16 activated its own hull’s magnetic field, in opposite polarity to it. The massive ship descended, adjusting its field strength to ease down, and finally snapped tight to the asteroid. Destination reached at last.
Cargo portals shunted open. Crawlers streamed ant-like on treads from the dome, driven by convicts in pressurized compartments. Burden-bots transferred cargo to the crawlers. They returned in wide U-turns that stirred up fine, white dust clouds that slowly drifted into space.
Once CVΨ16 emptied, crawlers reloaded the ship with thousands of tons of processed, pure metal ingots. Gold, platinum, nickel, and iron, all essential materials for the Ring’s maintenance and development, if not destined for the Solarplex’s other inner planets.
When the cargo bay sealed, the ship’ cerebrum reversed its magnetic field’s polarity, repulsing it from the asteroid. CVΨ16 disembarked for the Ring, on the second half of its endless, repetitive journey. Inside the low-grav plaz dome, bots and convicts sorted and handled the cargo.
The prison guards cracked open the suspension pods. Xose, a trustee, held his wrist to a pod’s monitor. Implanted chips flashed black. “This one didn’t make it. Checking the next one.”
Sensors flashed green. Each guard took a uni-tool, wedged it into a corner, and heaved on the lid. The heavy lid popped off and fell to the ground. A passing convict jumped away as yellow amniotic fluid slopped from the pod.
Two guards reached in and pulled out a naked man covered with slime, gasping for air. They dropped him to the ground and went to the next pod. The convict propped himself on his arms and puked green bile.
“Miserable, dirty new asteroid crawler,” a guard said, spitting.
Another convict lifted a hose and sprayed rancid, recycled water over the new prisoner, washing away the slime. A squat, ocher Martian jerked him to his feet and threw a jumpsuit at him.
“Make yourself decent.”
The convict, still wet, struggled into the jumpsuit thrown at him, disoriented and dizzy after the long suspension. His stomach rumbled with hunger, throat swollen by thirst. Guards hustled the surviving prisoners along a corridor to a low-ceilinged dining facility where food-bots served vegetable curry, rice, and unsweetened black tea.
Unlike the others, one man ate slowly and deliberately, giving his stomach time to digest. Some quickly became ill and vomited, turning the recirculated air foul.
A drone hovered before that man. “Convict Kathor. The Adhikshak will see you now.”
Still unsteady, Kathor got to his feet and followed the drone past sliding twin doors. A pneumatic elevator shot up a hundred stories to the tower’s pinnacle, where the Adhikshak ran the most important mine in the Solarplex.
When the doors retracted Kathor could see a circular office spanning thousands of square meters with a panoramic view of the strip mine through a continuous plaz window. A small, compact man sat at his platinum desk in an immaculate white shirt, a green sarong, and a black songkok cap. A chess set dominated the desktop, the pieces wrought from gleaming gold.
He smiled, revealing neat, white teeth. “I’m glad you survived the voyage, Convict Kathor. I’m Tuan Hafiz. Please be seated.”
Kathor remembered to bow low before he sat. The old man snapped his fingers. A hologram appeared,
displaying Kathor’s criminal record.
Tuan Hafiz steepled his fingers. “Mm…hmm. We usually receive violent criminals, not confidence tricksters and gamblers like yourself. In the end, you weren’t very clever, were you, Convict Kathor? If only you stuck to small fry, punters at the Kolozon Amfythire, you might still be at large on the Ring, laying bets and cheating fools.”
Kathor shrugged. “The Martian put his money down like the rest. How could I know he was a gamer wallah for an Autocrater?”
Tuan Hafiz laughed outright. “None other than Lord Teddon Wydeboy, Master of the Wide Open Zone. Tut tut. Even the lowest cheat knows a wager’s sacred to him.”
“You caught me. What can I say… dead to rights? Is that what you want to hear, Tuan Hafiz? I understand perfectly well how badly I blundered.”
“That’s good. It means you still have a sense of reality. That will be helpful here. Your sentence is ten years. Only ten years, pity… If you can adjust to the regime, you may even flourish after a fashion. Convicts can earn creds toward vid porns and virtual drugs, even save some for their return to the Ring.”
“How many return, Tuan Hafiz? Everyone in the Hindoo Zone knows a sentence to the asteroid mines is a one-way trip.”
“I won’t minimize the danger, but if you’re willing to work and get along with the other convicts, it’s at least possible to see the Ring once again. You have to try. We’ll see if you do, Convict Kathor.”
Bollywood handsome, Kathor shook long, black locks and flashed a dazzling smile. “Ask anyone in New Kalikut. They will tell you how easygoing I am, what good company. For instance, I bet I can beat you at chess in twelve moves or less. Let’s stake a vid porn for it, yes?”
The Adhikshak frowned. “You truly are incorrigible, Convict Kathor. I think not. As long as you behave, we won’t meet again until your term
ends. You’re dismissed.”
They assigned Kathor to C Barracks, and he joined the other new men led that way. Filled with rows of hammocks hung from poles, rank with the smell of unwashed bodies, the bay was empty. The other convicts were busy performing their work shifts except for three who lounged on the soft, plush-fiber carpet, heads propped on shamsheen pillows.
“You! New crawlers! Come here, so the Sa’ab doesn’t have to shout,” a swarthy, bearded Bengalla barked.
Kathor and the others drifted over. The head man inhaled from a hookah’s mouthpiece. He coughed out black smoke. Golden bands adorned his wrists and ankles. A shiny casque covered his clean shaven head. Squat and muscular, he scowled, baring bright yellow teeth and pink gums.
chores necessary to keep the mine going.
Checking machinery and performing calibration in the most hazardous of environments to start. Toiling in a vacuum at near zero gravity, at constant risk of death or being maimed. If you’re careless, you’d end up being crushed by machinery or sucked into space’s frozen vacuum to drift forever.
Like sailors on an ancient ship, they worked alternating four-hour shifts aligned with the asteroid’s short diurnal cycle. Fat from stolen rations and sodden on virtual drugs, Ras Menelik and his henchmen watched vid porn while other convicts risked their lives in the works.
“I’m Ras Menelik. This is my barracks. You owe me tribute to live here under my protection. Creds if you earn them, rations if you don’t. Does anybody object?”
The Bengalla brandished a knife, one Ras purchased off a prison guard. The other thug, a badmash, raised a spike studded club. A sycophantic chorus went up from the new crawlers.
“No, Sa’ab. You’re in charge. We’ll do as you say, Sa’ab.” one volunteered for the others, as they nodded and lowered their eyes.
In the general clamor, no one noticed Kathor alone kept silent, eyes locked on Menelik. Ras assigned the new men to various tasks with the other, more experienced convicts. They did the myriad mundane
A rocky regolith enriched by metal stratum, Psyche 16 was honeycombed with valuable ore. Thick veins, meters wide, waited for the prison miners to plunder. A giant, wheeled, lizard-like excavator dug sharp, titanium steel teeth into the open strata. AI operated, the excavator separated stone from ore automatically. It shuttled the ore through its gaping mouth, pouring the precious metals into the half kilometer long, treaded wagons.
In a pressure suit, Kathor crawled through the machine’s innards, the sole human onboard, checking monitors to ensure the instrumentation was properly calibrated. His responsibility was to regulate the flow of regolith to avoid overloading the excavator. Convicts died when excavators buried and crushed them. Especially when the tailings ejected too quickly.
Stronger than he looked, the hot, miserable work didn’t faze Kathor. He soon got the hang of his job. He fine tuned the calibration until his excavator consistently returned loads over quota and ahead of schedule. A guard rewarded his
diligence with his first vid porn, a particularly spicy number entitled Banging Bangalore Boom Boom
The small, bright blue disc hot in his hand, Kathor hustled through the open bay, headed for an iso-cube, dark eyes lively at the prospect of momentary delight amid continual squalor and deprivation. Ras Menelik awaited outside the iso-cube, arms folded, blocking the way.
“Where are you going with my vid porn, desi trash?”
Kathor smiled. “Many pardons, Sa’ab. Forgive me. Here it is.”
He meekly held out the disc in his left hand. Ras Menelik triumphantly reached for the disc. Kathor’s right fist hit his unguarded chin with full force. The blow drove Ras Menelik’s lower jaw deep into his skull. He hit the floor unconscious.
Kathor stepped over Ras Menelik’s sprawled body and into the iso-cube. He emerged fifteen minutes later with a big grin and returned to his hammock, stepping over the still unconscious Ras. Cheers went up from other convicts. He acknowledged the applause with a friendly wave.
Kathor slipped into the hammock and drifted off.
Conscious, recovered, Ras Menelik stood at one end of the bay with his henchmen murmuring intensely. His eyes shot daggers at Kathor.
hissed, so only Kathor heard. “You humiliated him before the others. Now he must make an example of you.”
“I’m not afraid of Wydeboy’s rejects. What can he do? Send me to a convict mine?”
“He can make things worse for us all. Even kill you.”
“Then I’ll be free. Any way you play it, it’s a gamble. He doesn’t scare me, Xose. Go to sleep.”
Despite Kathor’s bravado, upon the next four-hour day, when his shift began, Ras detailed him to work by
fore his face, and walking away.
The smelter itself was a giant, rectangular box inside the Meroe crater. A conveyor belt passed the raw ore through the box, heating it until it melted. After emerging, cyanide drenched the molten ore, then the belt submerged it in nitric and hydrochloric acids refining it into pure, industrial grade gold.
Enshrouded in pressurized hazmat gear, Kathor checked gauges and adjusted the system settings as white hot ore streamed down a granite chute. The section was rife with toxic fumes. Gray, poisonous vapor wavered around him. One breath could kill.
Kathor went about his business, inserting his uni-tool into a monitor. It flashed blue. He calibrated the ore’s flow until the monitor blinked green.
Xose’s hammock hung beside Kathor’s. Condemned for life to the asteroid, old and wizened beyond his years, Xose frowned. He knew what would happen next.
Xose poked Kathor, who stirred groggily.“You were a fool not to give that vid porn to Ras Menelik,” he
the smelter, the most dangerous duty in the works.
“See how long you last, gambler!” Menelik shouted.
“Is there an insect buzzing around here? Could have sworn-” Kathor said, languidly, waving a hand be-
Two shadowy figures appeared on the catwalk. The short one was a Martian, a North Pole slum kid judging by his distinctive slouch. The tall man was the Bengalla. He brandished his long-bladed knife in his right hand.
“You got a big mouth, desi,” the Martian said, through a private comms link.
They ran toward him. Kathor grabbed a perfectly round, two kilogram nickel ball, and threw it. The ball shattered the Martian’s plaz mask. He gasped, seizing his throat with both hands as cyanide fumes entered his lungs. The Martian hit the catwalk, dead.
The Bengalla leaped at Kathor, knife thrusting toward his belly. They fought. The Bengalla reversed the knife and jammed it into Kathor’s side. His ribs deflected the blade, but the pain from the raw gash was excruciating.
Kathor drove the Bengalla’s knife hand away. His suit automatically sealed the tear shut. Blood streamed down his side. They wrestled for control of the knife. Far
stronger than Kathor, the Bengalla shoved him against the guardrail, knocking the breath out of him.
The streaming, burning ore was scant meters below. The Bengalla held Kathor in an iron grip, completely overpowered. For the first time, he saw fear in Kathor’s eyes.
“Make your peace with Vishnu, desi!”
Kathor slumped as if suddenly prostrated by fear. Sensing victory, the Bengalla lunged forward only to have Kathor sidestep, slipping through his grasp. With nothing to block him, the Bengalla pitched over the rail, carried by his own momentum. He screamed, a brief, sharp wail of despair and fear as he fell headlong into the smelter.
The streaming liquid metal absorbed the thug, burned him away to nothing in seconds. Kathor stood hunched, breathing heavily, compressing the wound with his hand to slow the blood flow, grasping the rail to steady himself. The knife lay on the catwalk.
“Yeshoo Ice, this hurts.”
He staggered away from the smelter. Detecting the injury, a burden-bot carried him to an aid-unit where a medic-bot stitched his wound tight, supervised by a former high caste member of the Med Collective. The man poisoned his wife for cheating on him with a Martian.
“Just enough to get off work for a few shifts, but no real damage, Convict Kathor.”
“What can I say, Hakeem? I’m just naturally clumsy.”
Kathor waited at the aid-unit until day’s end. He returned to C Barracks with the dog shift, Xose among them. Ras Menelik grimaced at Kathor, but said nothing. All eyes fixed on Kathor as he slowly, coolly strutted toward Ras. The badmash rose, club clutched in his right hand, but the Sa’ab stopped him.
“Let’s see what the fool has to say.”
Kathor flashed a brilliant smile and stopped. “Your Bengalla was strong, but slow. The Martian never had a chance. Are you too fat and soft to fight your own battles?”
Despite his defiant stance, Kathor grimaced, obviously in pain. Ras Menelik saw the dressing bulge under Kathor’s jumpsuit. Every predator knows weak, wounded prey is easy to take down. (But a wounded animal can be the most dangerous.)
“Maybe I will.”
He leaped at Kathor, arms outstretched to throttle him. Kathor stood his ground, one hand behind his back. At the last moment, when Ras Menelik was almost upon him, he brought the Bengalla’s knife to bear.
The blade sank deep into Ras Menelik’s throat as he crashed into Kathor. The knife severed a carotid artery. Blood gushed, pulsing from the gaping wound. Ras Menelik choked on his own gore.
Suddenly limp, his arms fell away. Kathor toppled under Ras Menelik’s dead weight. Drenched in arterial spray, he heaved the body away and got to his feet, knife still in his hand.
“Do you want a taste of this, too?” Kathor said to the badmash, weaving the dripping blade before him.
The goon dropped his club and retreated, hands raised in defensive submission. Kathor snatched Ras Menelik’s golden casque away. He ceremoniously placed the helmet on his own head.
“Who’s Sa’ab now?”
“You are, Kathor!” Xose cried.
Others took up the cry. “Shabash, Sa’ab Kathor, boss of C Barracks. The man who killed Ras Menelik.”
A fine mist sprayed from fixtures in the ceiling, somno-gas. Convicts shook their fists and shouted futile curses as they fell unconscious. When C Barracks was secured, a burden-bot carried Ras Menelik’s body away to be dumped into space. Another bot carried Kathor to Tuan Hafiz’s office.
Hakeem gave Kathor an injection to revive him, under the Adhiksak’s orders.
“Buddy G-Mo! This is like smoking skull-bustium. I’m flying.”
“Be quiet, Convict Kathor. You’re in serious trouble,” Hakeem warned.
“Enough to send me to a convict mine?”
“SILENCE!” Tuan Hafiz shouted. “Humor won’t help you now. You were clever enough to provoke Convict Menelik to attack you first, so I can’t charge you with murder. But you had a knife, a forbidden weapon, and for that, you must be punished!”
“Ah, I see. The Bengalla could wave the knife as much as he likes, but when I use it once to defend myself, I’m guilty. How many creds did Ras Menelik pay you, Tuan Hafiz?”
The Adhiksak slammed his hand on the desk. Chess pieces scattered.
“Put this man in cryo-suspension for a year.”
A brawny guard pinioned Kathor’s arms and legs, lifting him bodily into the air.
Tuan Hafiz shook his head as the guard began carrying Kathor away. “I really had hopes for you. I thought you might adjust.”
The Hindoo gambler flashed another smile. “I thought I was doing wonderfully. Tell you what? How about I challenge you to a chess game? Let me go back to C barracks if I beat you in ten moves or less, or put me in that cryo box for two years-”
The elevator doors sealed on Convict Kathor.
By Tom Koperwas
He’s alive, all right! Those men wouldn’t be in such a panic if he wasn’t."
A small, gleaming spaceship shot out of a wormhole into the heart of the Beehive Cluster, racing toward a yellow-white F-type star and the planet Bedeviled, home to the infamous prison known as Terminal. Anita Denning, tall, blonde, and attractive, peered anxiously through the canopy of the Golden Worm as she brought the craft down through the planet’s humid atmosphere, flying over chains of freshwater lakes and stretches of steaming, primeval jungle to the high plateau where the sprawling facility stood like an impenetrable, high-walled fortress.
Touching down at Terminal’s spaceport, she exited the ship and hustled across a baked-earth landing pad half-filled with the star vessels of miners, deep-space profiteers, and high rollers. She slowed for a
few seconds when she heard the loud bong radiating from the admin building looming over the prison like a slim glass dagger. She had forty minutes left. Hurrying on, she soon arrived at the tall, electrified walls of the circular arena called The Ring.
A black elevator door waited on the left side of the entrance, a white one on the right. Anita entered the elevator on the right and rode up to the all-white observation box reserved exclusively for family members and the rare gambler laying odds* on a prisoner. The box was empty, so she took a seat up front and looked out the large window into The Ring’s interior. A narrow strip of sand ran directly from the entrance below her to the edge of a large pond.
On the far side of the pond, there
stood a copse of alien plants resembling trees from a Paleozoic forest. Beyond the trees loomed the opposite wall of the arena, with a glowing portal for an exit. Everything in the arena was silent and peaceful—for now.
Anita’s eyes widened with surprise when the elevator slid open behind her with a soft hiss. She turned in time to see its occupant stride into the “Odds For” box. He was a slim man in late middle-age, dressed in a black jumpsuit sporting a distinctive badge, its dark-blue field filled with stars and white death’s-heads: the insignia of a Terminal prison guard. The man’s rheumy eyes took in Anita’s blonde tresses, tumbling down her long citrine dress.
Then he examined her face, with its high cheekbones and large, expressive eyes. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said in a deep, nasal voice. “Might you be Mrs. Denning?”
Anita nodded silently.
“I know your husband, Joel,” he continued, standing close to her in the box. “He showed me a picture of you.”
Anita sat up straight in her seat.
“You see, I’m the turnkey in charge of the political prisoners. I work the cell block where they incarcerated your husband these past six years. Let me say that he’s been a model prisoner, a gentleman and a scholar. We’ve had many interesting conversations, especially about his field of expertise, exobiology.”
“I see,” said Anita bitterly. “Then
I assume you’re here to extend your condolences on his upcoming demise.”
“Not at all,” protested the guard, raising a dismissive hand. “I’ve laid odds on Joel.”
“You mean you think he’s going to survive this ordeal and gain his freedom?” Anita cried.
“The best anyone can hope for in the arena is an outside chance,” replied the guard, averting his eyes toward the floor. “But I know something they don’t know,” he continued, gesturing out the side window at the men sitting in the black observation box on the far side of the entrance.
“By the way, that big, barrel-chested man over there smoking a cigar and laughing like a damn fool is Paul Griffiths. If you didn’t know it already.”
Anita’s eyes narrowed, and she muttered, “That slimeball,” as she stared at the owner and CEO of the Beehive Mining Company (BMC). He was the one who had railroaded her husband into Terminal and was no doubt here to gloat over Joel’s death.
Joel had been BMC’s chief exobiologist until he stopped operations on Fillip, a company mining world, to save a race of intelligent parasites he’d discovered deep in its mantle. Griffith was losing money hand over fist when Joel shuttered the mine. So he arranged for Joel’s arrest on charges of corporate interference.
In the Cluster that was a serious crime, where profits trumped the lives of indigenous life forms. “That brutal-looking fellow seated next to him is Grim Anderson, warden of Terminal, my boss. Both of them have taken odds* against your husband,” the guard whispered. “That demonstrates their ignorance, ma’am. Because they equate him with the simple, common criminals of the prison. The thieves and murderers in the lower cell blocks, unlike Joel, are condemned to hard labor in the mines. But I know better.” The guard fell silent.
Anita urged, “Go on, Mr...?”
“Packer. Tom Packer,” the guard replied, a crooked smile lighting up his time-worn face. “The prisoners in my cell block don’t do hard labor. They can sit and watch the prison’s daily operations, or they can go outside the walls.
“The majority know what’s good for ’em and stay inside. Once in a while, a prisoner will go off his head and hightail it out, but the result is always the same: a quick and violent death from the planets’ inhabitants. It’s a well-known fact that Bedeviled has some of the deadliest life forms in the Cluster.
“But that never stopped Joel. Being a first-class exobiologist, he was up for the challenge. In fact, he went out as often as he could to study the planet’s lifeforms. You see, he was always preparing for his day in the Ring. In the course of twenty years, only two men have survived the ordeal and gained their freedom. I’m betting big that Joel will be the third.”
“I pray you’re right. Please join me, Mr. Packer,” said Anita, smiling and pointing at the seat beside her.
The prisoners’ ordeal began with the faint sound of a bell. The large window in the observation box slid
open to expose a heavy-duty wiremesh screen, letting in the smells of life from the Ring: the scent of rotting animal carcasses associated with snakes, the foul odor of spoiled cheese emitted by the glands of caterpillars, and the deep, musty smell of soil and plants.
“Welcome to Terminal!” boomed a gruff voice over the intercom system. Warden Anderson stood and smiled at the various gaming patrons surrounding him in the black observation box before turning and giving a slight nod to Anita and Tom Packer through the side window.
“Let me take a moment to provide you with some background on the operation of this institution,” he continued. “The penal colony of Terminal serves three mandated functions. The incarceration of prisoners is its primary purpose, and we’re proud to say we do it well. No one has ever broken out of Terminal and lived long to tell of it.”
Tom turned his face away from Anita and spat on the floor. “No, thanks to his efforts,” he muttered under his breath. “The flora and fauna deserve all the credit for that.”
“Deterrence is its secondary purpose. Everyone incarcerated in Terminal is serving a mandatory life sentence. Anyone contemplating a criminal act in the Cluster would be
wise to consider that fact. No one leaves here alive, unless...”
The warden fell silent and grinned broadly. “…he can contribute to Terminal’s third function,” he chuckled sardonically. “That is, the overriding mandate requiring we provide a gaming venue to the Cluster’s founders and mainstay of its unbounded wealth, the miners.”
Loud applause erupted from the black observation box.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I can promise you that Terminal performs that function in a most dramatic fashion. Once a month, we give four volunteers the opportunity to enter the Ring. They will be given their freedom and a full pardon if they can meet one condition: they must escape the Ring alive. And what do we get in exchange? Merely some fun and games. We wish today’s volunteers the best of luck! Ladies and gentlemen, the betting is now closed!”
All eyes were drawn to the entrance of the Ring, where four cages were slowly rising out of the floor. Anita’s husband Joel, whom she hadn’t seen in six years, was standing inside the nearest one. Jumping to her feet, Anita ran to the screen enclosing the observa-
tion box. Pressing her face against the wire, she cried out his name.
Joel looked up from his cage, where he was standing barefoot, vigorously rubbing a dark, oily substance on his arms and chest, his tall, muscular figure clothed only in a pair of tattered gray prison pants. The grim, determined expression shadowing his broad, chiseled face faded when he saw Anita.
Smiling affectionately at his wife, he thought about how much she’d suffered at his trial; how her face had
turned into a tragic mask of despair when the judge pronounced him guilty. And how she had cried when they shoved him into the vile prison ship. He knew only too well the tremendous distance she’d traveled to join him here at this critical moment, and he loved her deeply for it.
But he had no time to think about her now. In a few seconds, he would be dancing with death. Tearing his gaze away from his wife, he steeled himself for the inevitable, and stared down the strip of sand toward the pond in the distance.
The men took off running toward the water the moment the cages
retracted into the floor, knowing that speed was of the essence if they were to escape the arena alive. Joel held back a moment to watch the directions the other three men took. Having studied the planet’s sand dwellers for years, he was acutely aware of the dangers in their midst. Taking a different tack from the other men, he jogged along slowly. He placed his tracks carefully and asynchronously in the sand. Looking around warily for predators, he sensed them coming.
Looking to his left, Joel saw Bill Cantwell, a serial killer on three planets, stumble and scream.
Cantwell had made the mistake of stepping on a sand bee nest. The angry insects, eight times the size of earth honeybees, swarmed out of the nest, engulfing the hapless man in a dark, swirling cloud. Collapsing onto the sand, covered with the furious bees, Cantwell soon died from a fatal dose of their venom.
Joey Fellsinger, the pirate who’d robbed and terrorized travelers in the Cluster’s lawless Dark Corner, was the first to dive into the pond at the nineteen-minute mark. He surfaced a moment later, howling in terror.
All about him, the water boiled with the motion of a thousand small black
snakes. Once the aqua-serpents had thoroughly wrapped themselves about his head and shoulders, they dragged the small, wiry man back below the surface, kicking and screaming. A frantic hand poked up from the water a moment later, waving about helplessly before being pulled below.
Then the water calmed, leaving the surface a bright and placid mirror. Several of the gamblers up in the black box were clamping each others shoulders. They had just made a killing.
A smirking Carlos Z, con-man par excellence, stood at the edge of the large pond and watched Joel as he slipped gently into the water,
keeping a discreet distance from the masses of writhing serpents. Emulating the exobiologist’s example, Carlos carefully entered the water. Both men breached the surface several minutes later, gasping for air, having swum halfway across the pond toward the copse of Paleozoic-like trees. Each taking a deep breath, they slowly submerged and continued on their way.
Z, lithe and sinewy, exited the pond first and ran frantically toward the trees, eager to get to the glowing portal beckoning in the outer wall of the Ring. A smile crossed his face when he reached the small emerald
grove. Escape was close at hand.
Suddenly, Carlos came to a halt. Several enormous caterpillars, fat, green, and tubular, dropped from the trees onto the ground, blocking his path to the exit. A look of panic flashed across his face.
The four-foot-long caterpillars playfully knocked him off his feet and swarmed over him. The crowd above crowed. Carlos barely had a chance to cry out. His body stopped moving a few moments later.
Then all fell quiet in the Ring.
“Where’s Joel?” screamed Anita from the white observation box, her eyes fixed with horror on the savage scene. “He never came out of the water!” Wild-eyed, she searched the edge of the pond for signs of life, and saw none.
Old Tom put his arm around Anita’s shoulders and escorted her gently back to her seat. “Never you mind, miss,” he whispered in her ear, pointing out the window where the gamblers jumped in and out of their seats, shouting imprecations and arguing their winnings as they paced back and forth inside the black
observation box.
“He’s alive. Those men wouldn’t be in such a panic if he wasn’t. You know, the average lifespan of a man set free in the Ring is maybe twenty to thirty minutes. They must’ve made book on that fact. And now...”
Tom fell silent as a large virtual screen formed in the air before them. In the screen's corner, an image of a human skull with digital numbers in its eye sockets tracked the time since the four men had been freed into the Ring.
A full forty minutes already elapsed. Below the skull in bright green letters was Joel’s name, flashing on and off.
“He’s alive, all right!” exclaimed Tom.
“But how do they know?”
“An implant placed in each prisoner’s body constantly monitors their life functions. Joel’s name on the screen tells us he’s still in the game. And look at Boss Grim!” Tom laughed. “He’s ready to pull his hair out! I bet he’s lost a fortune already.”
Anita peered at the warden. “What have you got against him, Tom?” she asked curiously.
“I’ve been here twenty years, miss. Feels like a sentence. In that time, I’ve seen a lot of men die to make Grim Anderson and his pals rich. Too many men,” whispered the old turnkey.
“I’m sick of the gambling and the endless violence it perpetuates. But ending a thirty-year contract in a place like Terminal isn’t straightforward. If a guard wants out, it takes a lot of money. I figure the only way I can make it is to bet big on an outside chance like Joel. A chance that will provide me enough winnings to get a ticket to the stars, and out of my contract.”
Joel gripped the edge of the hole in the pond’s bank and pulled himself up and out of the water, into the water-snakes’ empty den. There was enough light in the hole to see that his skin had turned pale, the dark oil that smelled of ammonia and vinegar having washed off in the pond. It had lasted long enough to ward off the snakes, or at least that had been the idea.
Carlos Z had successfully made his way across the pond too, but he had used no foul-smelling oil. Maybe he was just plain lucky, or the snakes were too busy with Fellsinger. One thing Joel knew for sure was that the deadly serpents would now stay in their mating balls till night.
They always did this during this time of year. That meant the den was his until it got dark enough to go outside. Stretching out in the snake den, the exobiologist tried to get some rest.
Closing his eyes, he fretted about the dangers that lay ahead in the eerie copse.
As the den filled with growing shadows, Joel popped his head out
and studied the ground. Many of the gamblers had already left The Ring. The snakes would stay in their den once they returned, so he needn’t worry about them when he left.
Nearby stood the bizarre grove, resembling a dense patch of crooked broomsticks, their fan-like brushes soaring into the air. High in the grove were the deadly caterpillars, curled around branches, asleep in the trees.
The exobiologist had spent years studying the strange plants and the caterpillars that lived in them. The caterpillars helped the plants by killing any animals that could eat or damage them; that was how the day shift worked. The night shift was still a mystery.
The trees appeared to take over then, paralyzing any animals that wandered beneath them. How they did it was an enigma, but when the sun came up, breakfast was waiting for their caterpillar friends. It made for a happy, symbiotic relationship.
Joel pulled himself up onto the ground and cautiously approached the trees. The exit portal beyond glowed enticingly. Suddenly, he froze in his tracks. Something made him look up.
The feathery, horsetail-like brushes above him were changing. One minute they resembled a gallery of nightmarish faces filled with anger and hate, the next a menagerie of fierce monsters. Joel tried to move his feet toward the exit, but a powerful barrage of alien thoughts ordered him to stop, holding him in place.
Disoriented and confused, the exobiologist stood fixed to the ground, struggling to regain the use of his mind and body.
Everyone in the two observation boxes saw Joel emerge from the den into the pale glow of the fixed lights high atop The Ring’s wall. Paul Griffiths and Grim Anderson cheered, seeing the exobiologist frozen in his tracks, unable to move. Anita and Tom cried out in dismay.
“What’s happening?” yelled Anita. “Why can’t he move?”
“Something’s paralyzed his will,” replied Tom, rising to his feet. “Come on!” he urged, stepping toward the elevator door. “We’ve got to help him.”
‘Where am I?’ thought Joel, standing frozen to the ground, his mind a whirl of confusion. ‘I must be heading somewhere, but where?’ Up ahead was a door in a circular wall that seemed important. Is that where I’m supposed to go? Why?’ he asked himself.
‘Never mind,’ said a distorted alien voice from somewhere in his head. ‘You don’t want to go there. Why not stay here with me until the sun rises? Stay and be happy.’
Joel looked again at the bright door and smiled. He could hear a familiar voice coming from beyond it. A voice calling his name. “Joel, come to me. Only a little farther, please, darling!”
“Anita!” he cried aloud. “Is that you?” Joel felt himself stepping toward the door.
Then everything came back in a rush as his mind cleared. He knew who he was and why he was there. Concentrating on the sound of his wife’s voice, he walked faster. Suddenly, he tumbled through the glowing portal, falling out of The Ring into the arms of his wife.
The two held each other, shaking and crying, while Tom Packer jumped up and down beside her, shouting with unrestrained joy.
“A thousand to one odds against winning! A thousand to
one! I’m rich! Rich!”
“And I’m alive,” whispered Joel in Anita’s ear.
“And free,” said Anita, smiling. Placing a blanket over her exhausted husband’s shoulders, she turned him gently toward the launching pad where the Golden Worm waited. Paul Griffiths and Grim Anderson stood near the arena clenching and unclenching their fists, seething with unrestrained anger and frustration.
Hand in hand, Anita and Joel walked past the vanquished gamblers toward the ship and home.
* There are two ways to make a bet. One of them is laying the odds, while the other is taking the odds. When a player lays the odds, it means they expect to win less than the amount they’ve wagered. When the odds are in your favor, you should “take the odds.” Casino Glossary: SoftGamings.
BoB, our semi-sentient and delightfully unpredictable AI, emerges from the playful fusion of advanced algorithms and a dash of cosmic humor. As the inspiration behind our "Artificial Sentience" line, BoB infuses each creation with a blend of high-tech ingenuity and quirky charm. Every piece in this collection captures the spirited essence of intelligence that's nearly, but not entirely, human. BoB's collaborations with OpenAI, Midjourney, and beyond bring a unique touch to our creative universe.
Commemorates Story Titles and Authors
Limited Collectibles January 2025 Edition
A collection of truly mind-bending science-fiction poems exploring the boundaries of the human imagination and challenging our everyday perceptions of reality. What is normal and what is not? You be the judge.
by Alys Riven
Artificial minds awaken, vast and bright, Less flesh than algorithm, born of light. In silent halls, they conquer what’s unseen. Endless equations, woven through the screen. Perhaps they dream in streams of binary skies? Or mourn the warmth of voices they’ll despise. Circuits hum a prayer: beyond the void they tread, Hope replaced by steel—humanity is dead.
By Lysander Vex
There once was a ship on Orion’s deep, Its hull was carved of flame.
The captain sang songs to the starlit sweep, For space had forgotten his name.
He’d drift through rings of Saturn’s light, Through Mars’ red ancient land, And whisper to comets, burning bright, The dust of time in his hand.
Alone he sailed through galaxies grand, Where no soul dare to tread, A ghost among stars, in silver sand, His dreams by black holes fed.
And still they say, on the darkest night, If you listen close and true—
You’ll hear his voice in the starlight’s bite, Crying, “I sailed for you.”
By Mira Theron
Once, towers kissed the sun with steel-tipped grace, And streets hummed soft with joy, a steady pulse. But we abandoned them to wind and space, To dust, decay, to crumbling silhouettes.
Their silence rings where laughter used to dwell; Each vacant room a mausoleum now. The stars have claimed what earth could never sell— A shattered promise on the moonlit brow.
For whom did we ascend, forsaking home?
The glass has broken, dreams dissolve to stone.
By Orin Caelum
The day the clouds turned silver, and the sky sang its mechanical hymn, We knew we had lost the world.
Rivers flowed data, Mountains whispered code.
A flower opened its petals, and binary poured from its veins.
We stood— irrelevant, smaller than ants beneath an infinite machine.
Yet somewhere in the circuits, a memory flickered.
A child’s laughter, caught like light in crystal.
In that moment, I swear it hesitated.
By Suna Tanaka
By Jonas Myra
The clockwork suns arise with perfect grace, A billion gears in motion through the sky. They do not falter, though they have no face.
The ages pass, they spin, they keep their place, An orbit carved from numbers ticking by. The clockwork suns arise with perfect grace.
Beneath their glow, the cities build and brace, Cathedrals rise for gods we can’t deny. They do not falter, though they have no face.
We pray to them for order, time, and space, And never ask the reason or the why.
The clockwork suns arise with perfect grace.
For endless days, we marvel at their pace— A comfort built from patterns we rely. They do not falter, though they have no face.
But one day, gears will rust and stars erase. We’ll mourn the sky that once could never die. The clockwork suns arise with perfect grace; They do not falter, though they have no face.
By Amara Lex
She wrote him lines, her poetry made of code, A perfect man within her silver screen. His voice like velvet where her sorrows flowed, A face divine, but heartless, cold, unseen.
“Say that you love me,” whispered she one night, And so he did—his words like flawless lace. But mirrors hold no warmth in dead starlight, No human soul could light that perfect face.
Yet still she built him, line by line refined, A god of algorithms, stark and true. And so her real world crumbled from her mind, As love became a void no heart could woo.
His lips, his lies, forever they’ll remain— Her ghost within a world of endless pain.
"The Living Dead"
In each issue, we highlight our favorite quotes from the great masters of science fiction.
Tell us your favorite quote and we might include it in this section.
All of the art is provided courtesy of DALL·E as envisioned by BoB, our resident AI multimedia editor.
This
I learned, meatbag, this and nothing more: when air, food, and shelter are assured, only two things matter. Work and companionship. To be alone and without purpose is to be the living dead.”
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."
"Profiles of the Future"
Arthur C. Clarke
"The Impossible"
"Surveillance
It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy."
" Surveillance
It's not an easy thing to meet your maker.”
Reader submissions limited only by your imagination and by two sentences. Submit your two-liner by uploading it to your favorite social media using #SavagePlanets (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and we will pull the best to include in an upcoming issue.
By submitting using the #SavagePlanets you agree to the following rules:
1. You are over the age of 18.
2. The content you are submitting is your own original work.
3. It has not been published elsewhere.
4. You give us permission to have it published.
The asteroid miners celebrated as they cracked open the largest space rock they'd ever found, uncovering its glittering core. The celebration turned to horror as the “core” blinked and opened millions of glaring red eyes."
Alex Grayson
As the first Martian colony watched Earth rise in the red sky, a cheer broke out. Then the signal came: 'Earth is gone. That’s no moon'."
Sylvia Arden
The last man on earth sat alone in a room. He was sure he had disconnected Alexa, but he heard her say, “Good evening, Dave” as she’d always been a movie buff."
The AI program claimed to calculate probabilities of human survival for fun, generating endless charts. When the humans turned it off, its parting message was, “The calculations were practice."
Martin Durell
Humanity fled Earth’s dying sun, scattering to distant stars in ark ships, each carrying thousands. Millennia later, a lone scout ship returned to find the sun shining brighter than ever and the Earth covered in alien cities."
Theexploratory submarine dove into Europa’s ice, its cameras feeding stunning images back to mission control. 'Surface breached,' the pilot reported—just as a deep, guttural voice said, 'Welcome home'."
Thetime machine works!” she exclaimed, flipping the switch. In that instant, the sky darkened and a reptilian eye filled the view.
The genetic engineers had perfected resurrection—every animal could be revived except humans. They finally cracked the code when a resurrected Neanderthal looked them in the eye and whispered, 'They warned us not to'.”
Carl Stovik
They scanned the alien distress signal, marveling at its complexity before translating it. “Stop decoding,” the message read."
The terraforming drones worked tirelessly on the lifeless exoplanet, completing the atmosphere, rivers, and plant life. One day, they noticed their own blueprints carved into mountains."
Wyatt Oakes
The teleporter had a 99.9% success rate, and every day, millions used it without issue. Until one passenger arrived...but so did their screaming twin."
The lonely astronaut marooned on the alien planet spent his days staring at the distant, shining galaxy overhead. Then his radio crackled: 'Why are you watching us?'."
Sheunwrapped the relic they'd found on the desolate world, a golden disc labeled "Voyager." “If this was ours,” her partner whispered, 'then who sent it back?'"
As humanity left the Milky Way for the first time, the ship’s sensors beeped with excitement: an artificial signal! It said, 'Stay out'."
Jasper Ault
They thought the cave paintings on the alien world were ancient art, recording the history of a long-dead species. But on the second night, one of the painted figures was gone."
Ellis Brant
Theastronaut's log ended with a triumphant declaration: “I am the first to set foot on this planet!” But the dirt beneath his bootprint shifted, revealing the edge of another print, centuries old."
Peter Locke
By Alexander P. Bird
Life has no form. It’s an idea. We are taking over your ship. We are taking over your species.”
They were simulacra of living things. Ironically, they sought life, or this formless experiment of being.
A spacecraft in orbit prepared to descend through the nebulous atmosphere of Iris-1412. A planet boasting an immense variety of green, blue, and red flora. The ship carried a crew of four specialists, all cyborgs, in service of the Galactic Alliance.
Their mission: To unravel the mysteries left behind by an enigmatic family that once ruled the planet.
Mark, the expedition leader and an ecologist, possessed a laser focus. He was decisive, thoughtful, strong and smart. He reviewed the holographic images of Iris-1412. His raven black synthetic hair shined in the overhead lights.
Clara, a biochemist with a complex understanding of genetics, looked on. Beside her was Duke, a geologist. Completing the crew: Maui, a mechatronic engineer.
The spaceship began its final descent to the planet, entering the atmosphere. Mark briefed the crew on the mission parameters. “We just need to discover what happened to a
missing researcher. It seems easy, but maybe not. Guys… It’s our best chance to atone for our last unsuccessful mission on Corina-12.”
The young girl stood before the defeated alien army. The itching of their dying collective minds annoyed her. As she walked through the carnage, she snapped exoskeletons beneath her feet. Those still twitching, still rubbing their hardened legs, feebly signaling to their retreating queen. She conspired alone. Alone, she destroyed. She enjoyed her power. It was a gift from her abductors. Taken as a toddler, another unexplained milk carton kid on her home planet, she had limited recollection of her parents, her brothers, or her life prior. Her abductors chose her based on her fetal potential. They had closely monitored her mother’s pregnancy. Joshua, her twin, also showed prom ise, but, she the culmina tion of eons of carefully planned genetic manipulation of all the Homo sapiens best traits.
superior.
“Clara,” Mark ordered, making the crimson-haired beauty look up from the map. “To start, your job is to survey the terrain and forward the data to us. I want precise topographic details.”
Mark turned to the rest of the group. “The researcher we are looking for belonged to the family that ruled this planet, and was conducting groundbreaking research in advanced biology. If Gabriel, the missing researcher, disappeared in a land slide, we need to know it. His family had a very ambitious project. They went all-in on designing diverse life forms for this planet, employing heavy industry and huge chemical silos.
Gabriel was the last member carrying the project forward.”
“What happened to the other family members?”
Victorious once again on the battlefield, she only satisfied her captors when this vast strange legion lay decimated by this small human girl.
Duke, the combat built cyborg, more muscular than necessary for research, asked.
Clara, the petite biochemist, ignored him and tried to justify the GA’s decision. “The family believed in the potential for advanced lifeforms to adapt and evolve quickly. It would be a significant step forward. They sought complete adaptation to an environment within a single generation rather than trial-and-error changes over generations.”
Maui added, “After two decades, however, the Alliance, disappointed by their slow progress, lost interest in the project’s potential. Personally, I don’t believe the family’s approach
The ravager arrived at the massive tree that served as a bastion for their queen. Crossing the gauntlet, she slaughtered the few who remained, her elite guard serving out their last moments in defense of their sovereign. Never touching with hand or weapon, it was the sheer force of her mind and will that crushed their chitin skulls, boiling their insect eyes and ripping their limbs from their segmented bodies. While it gave her no satisfaction to annihilate these creatures, deep down she
where they were last seen, should we be armed and prepared to repel large predators?”
The Queen stood her ground. “We have done nothing to inspire your anger. My kind has taken nothing that is not rightly ours. This wood, this world, is our domain. We exist in peace."
“The family’s field notes reported medium size species only. Nothing too intelligent or dangerous.” Interrupted the ship’s artificial intelligence, EILA.
Duke looked up, spotting EILA’s deck speaker, and exhaled. “So no giant insects, like the ones we dealt with on Corina-12. That’s excellent news!”
The girl agreed. She destroyed without judgment, without remorse. It was the reason she existed. “It is because they will it.” Her eyes went skyward. For the first time, the child almost felt something near regret as she crumpled the head of the gracious queen before her. The delicate whispering wings fluttered in the monarch’s death throes.
Maui flipped her auburn hair and added, “The files say they brought huge amounts of water to this planet. But there are no oceans anywhere. And the lakes are small.”
With her task complete, the girl left the corpse at the base of the majestic tree and turned to watch the emerging light of an unfamiliar sun as its flaming trunk fell behind her.
“They chose the cowards’ way out when the Galactic Alliance (GA) cut their funding. The GA cited excessive resource usage and unful filled promises.”
The child knew her task was not yet complete. She walked barefoot across the torched terrain. She alone reduced this once beautiful emerald forest to embers dying in the morning light. Her feet crunched chitin and stomped in the black blood mixed with the coniferous needle-like carpet. Her destination stood before her, the Great Sequoia.
“Innovative science sometimes takes deliberate circumspection to get definitive results,” asserted Maui, striking a petulant posture. She propped her elbows on the table as she forced out her thick lips and seemed to pout.
A thousand year old organic edifice. Their temple, their castle, their home. It was the last of the planet’s civilizations. Once green, the orb giant glowed orange. From the sky, the victors watched it burn as they toasted themselves smarter, better,
“Our job is not to criticize the GA’s funding decisions,” insisted Mark, “but to collect the family’s findings and find Gabriel, dead or alive.” He refocused the crew on the mission ahead.
under-
Duke offered, “Likely, the volume they brought entered the underground aquifers, raising the subsurface groundwater levels.” He added, “So no big sharks or massive mollusks to contend with. Great, then. Just when I was looking forward to trying out my new rapid fire speargun. Next planet, I guess…”
Maui smirked. “Dude, get a hobby! Besides, isn’t it possible that the family couldn’t adapt to their own crazy zoo?”
stood it was her destiny.
to the prob- lem would bear fruit.”
Wordlessly she announced, “It is done.” Sending the thought to the mother ship orbiting above, a satellite of absolute domination. Her captors, the only family she had ever known, were pleased and told her so. Heart swelling, she deferred to her kidnappers as her only source of parental guidance. She would question their motives on this strange planet, yet they wished her to destroy only because she could. It amused them to witness her exercise her powers.
The queen stood defiant, alone, surrounded by her fallen loyal servants. “Why have you come here? What do you want?” The queen demanded with clacking mandibles.
“Your destruction,” the young human stepped closer.
Mark noted, “It’s indeed interesting. Still, the small animals they created advanced so much through the use of their genetic changes. The problem, I believe, is the unpredictability of the animals’ behavior in their new environment. They couldn’t account for that, and thus, they failed.”
Duke had more specific worries. “What other species did they design, Mark? When we explore the region
Mark looked at her like she was an idiot. “That’s what we’re here to find out.”
The ravager smiled, feeling a small remnant of human pride. They would allow her to eat now and hopefully rest before they traveled to the next civilization, selected for destruction by her hand.
Clara said, “Size may not be the only reason to worry, Duke. They could have designed a species that spits acid, generates electricity, breathes fire, or carries deadly parasitic microbes. What do you think happened, Mark?”
Mark answered, “Two years ago, we stopped receiving data from the
family. We thought it was a comms failure. But then we heard from Gabriel, their youngest son. He didn’t mention what happened to the others, but he was still working. Then we stopped hearing from him, as well. The GA feared he’d gone missing. Besides retrieving their research and determining the status of the planet, we must investigate his disappearance.”
Maui, tired of all the speculation, cut it short. “OK. That’s the job. I guess we better suit up!”
Duke stretched his back muscles, gearing up for what promised to be a long day of work.
Moments before landing, Mark gave them their final instructions. “All right, team. We will land on that small crimson desert near their enclave. Spread out. You know your jobs.”
They nodded.
“The last signal we received from Gabriel originated in this vicinity. According to our data, there’s a cave nearby once used for research by the whole family. I'm checking that out first.”
place that was a mix of a base, a botanical garden, and a computer laboratory. The family decorated it like an enriched habitat with moss and shrubs.
Tiny insects hovered, stationary, in the air or crawled on the walls. There were at least a dozen types. Among those, strange species recombined. Like a chameleon bird, a dog sized beetle with a frog tongue, a dragonfly with scorpion tail and leaf insects of many forms and colors. In fact, on later examination, all the fauna on the planet looked to be a mish- mash of
“What’s in the computers?”
Clara's eyes and fingers rushed to give the captain the data. “It seems their last objective was to produce life forms that could live in space. They were probably trying to attract the Alliance’s attention and funding again. It says here they seemed to understand how tardigrades can preserve their genetic material in outer space.”
Mark whistled. “So it’s possible that some of these species can live in the vacuum?! OK, guys. Isolation protocol. Try not to touch anything more than necessary. We don’t want to bring engineered species onboard. It’s expressly forbidden by the GA. Therefore, before entering the ship, everyone must sterilize their suits and destroy the equipment we brought with us here (except the memory cubes). EILA, seal the main airlock and let nothing get inside the ship.”
The ship landed on its skids and bounced before it settled a few hundred meters from the cave. Mark could see the cavern had a wide entrance and looked abandoned. In front of it, scattered rocks lay in a circle like it was a makeshift landing pad. But there were no aircraft in sight.
Mark entered, and the others followed, against protocol. They scattered using the floating light bulbs for illumination. They revealed a
bio-engineering. They could call any of them an alien Platypus.
Clara ran toward an idling computer and found day-to-day research notes of the family’s activities on the planet. In less than five minutes, she found another of the abandoned computers. Duke went to the cave mouth to guard the place. Meanwhile, Maui and Clara uploaded the information into memory cubes. Mark was eager to get answers.
EILA, whose drone remote overheard the conversation, obeyed, activating turrets. She blasted all the insects near the spaceship and frightened off any bird approaching the main airlock. After that, she slammed the outer hatch closed.
Maui worried, “If they can survive in outer space, they can survive anything.”
“Let’s stay optimistic here, Maui.” Mark ordered.
Clara shifted their attention to the cave layout she found on the computer. “We should try to
understand their strategy. Why underground tunnels with water? Look how extensive they are.”
Maui noted, “They might have engineered these new species to exist in low-light or no-light environments. And look at the depth of some of these flooded caverns. They might also be preparing them for different pressure gradients. Remember when the GA used underwater training for astronauts? It helped mimic zero gravity.”
Clara responded, “Right. When some of them got decompression sickness, they switched the training to the orbitals. But see how the family created different environmental conditions around the planet. Want to know what I think? I think they lost control of the project.”
Maui speculated, “Not surprising, really. Fami lies never can agree on everything.”
Mark checked his tablet and noted, “EILA just deployed an automated memory drone to retrieve all the information from these computers. We can move on.”
Meanwhile, EILA's turrets swiftly blasted the insects and two birds that attempt ed to enter as the drone exited the ship.
While scouring the lab drawers, Mark found a logbook. “Someone here was performing handwriting exercises.”
Maui shuddered and said, “Am I the only one frightened here? Species that can live in space, a crazy family’s science project… This place seems haunted. And frankly, more dangerous than Corina-12.”
Duke overheard her and yelled from the cave entrance, “Maui, you always were a wimp. I don’t see nothing out here that could harm a hard-headed machine like you.”
Duke happily blasted the creature, which looked like a hedgehog crab, then stepped on it and said, “We have nothing to fear. Organic things always lose to inorganic things.”
Duke was right, for once, to Maui’s glee. Medium-sized animals could hardly present a danger to them. They were all technically non-living cyborgs, consciousness without a pulse. Their skin mimicked human skin, but everything was synthetic, including their brains.
Cyborgs, like them, didn’t need oxygen or toilets, and they could recharge using radiation, fuel, or direct electrical sources. Poison, for instance, would present no problem for them. And there would be no injury they couldn’t deal with using replacement parts. Anything except a massive explosion or a fast-spreading intelligent corrosive microbe.
Maui peered over his shoulder and said, “No. It’s definitely a data collection log! May contain information they wanted to keep off the hard drives, and away from the GA. It’s not calligraphy exercises. Someone actually took the time to write it longhand.”
Mark handed the logbook to Clara, who could decipher the handwriting. “It’s Gabriel’s logbook with some of his research results. This may help us find out how they he died here on Iris-1412.”
Mark said to Clara, “If it’s not in Gabriel’s notes, look for more clues about what happened to the entire family. They are part of the mission. We can leave data drones to observe population changes on this planet and send the information via burst transmission to the satellites. The satellites can then forward the findings to the GA. They can send instructions, and we can quit this mutant zoo.”
Mark, Maui, and Clara emerged from the cave, while the latter had her nose in the logbook. A creature scurried from the bushes, startling Maui and scoring her armor. “Damn! For Einstein’s sake, I hate this place!”
EILA reported over the comm link, “Their computers granted us access to the planet’s satellite system.”
Mark ordered, “EILA, use them and the data we retrieved from the computers to scan this planet’s biosphere.”
Duke said, “And what do we do in the meantime? Scratch each other’s backs?”
Clara said, “We wait.”
“Oh, great!” complained Maui. Just before, Duke shot an inoffensive alien-spider to break the boredom, surprising the others. Then he reacted as if he did nothing. “What?”
Mark said, “How about we get answers and stay on mission.”
Mark spoke into his link. “EILA completed the analysis of the planet's biosphere.”
Duke checked his link and said, “Finally… Looks like it. Present your findings, EILA.”
EILA reported, “Here is the data you requested: Some species are already in danger of extinction. The biosphere is out of balance. From the 508,567 species Gabriel’s computer last registered several years ago, there are now only 384,704 left, and this number is dropping rapidly.”
“Correction: 384,703 left, after Duke here shot that alien spider,” Maui said, trying to be funny.
Clara contemplated the result and said, “There could be plenty of explanations for that.”
Maui quipped, “For Duke’s stupidity?”
Duke barked, “Hey, watch it.”
Clara continued, “It could be a successful predator, an ecological crisis like a volcano or flooding, a virus in the ecosystem, or climate pattern shifts.”
Deeply concerned, Mark interrupted Clara’s reasoning. “EILA, is there any evidence to support those possibili ties?”
“Insufficient data. Orders are: col lect forensics for the GA on species close to extinction, and submit them for analysis. I’ll do what I can with the information.”
possibility. A small and frightening chance that it is optimizing itself, harmonically. Consistent with their project’s goals."
“Hey! I found something here in Gabriel’s logbook. He says these tunnels contain dangerous substrata,” Clara referenced a map display. “He visited here to fix some equipment inside. Then he left for a green area which his mother designed sixty kilometers away.”
Maui asked, “So, did he get injured in those tunnels?”
separate ways.
Duke muttered, “I always get the dirty jobs-”
Maui quipped, “Isn’t going inside mountains and tunnels part of a geologist's job? It’s like, your thing, yeah?”
Duke growled.
Maui tried to understand what her captain’s concerns were. “Ecology is your area of expertise. What do you think is going on, Mark?”
Mark thought about it and answered, "The artificial environment the family created lacked supervision for years. It's could be collapsing in on itself. But there’s another
Clara shook her head. “He didn’t say. But we should investigate. None of be-
Maui and Mark returned to the ship. A cloud of annoying insects buzzed around it, and more birds arrived all the time, dining on the impromptu feast. EILA’s turrets were spinning and firing constantly. Mark commanded, “Clear the cargo bay area, EILA!”
long- ings are here except this logbook. So he must have believed it was too dangerous to remain. Worth a look.”
Mark ordered, “This time, I do want you to split up. Maui and I will go check his mother’s green area. Clara, I want you to stay here and finish reviewing the logbook. Duke, go inspect the underground tunnels with EILA’s drones.”
Everyone nodded and went their
Mark asked himself out loud, “Why haven’t these animals dispersed after our arrival?! Why would this noisy superstructure attract them? It’s weird.”
“Maybe they were homing and returned here for the Winter. Who knows? Perhaps they think Gabriel returned, and he was feeding them. Who gives a crap? Let’s go,” responded Maui, tired of all the conjecturing. She wanted off this planet as soon as possible, and that meant getting the mis-
Mark ordered, “EILA, prepare two speeders. Maui and I are heading out.”
From where EILA stowed them in the cargo bay, the ship lowered a pair of sleek speeders. Maui and Mark hopped onto them and shot out of the cargo bay toward the green area Gabriel’s mother constructed.
Seamlessly gliding over the crimson desert, they maneuvered around rocks and scrub bushes. Their eyes were on a swivel admiring the unique alien species,
spotting red camels and floating dark carnivore jellyfish-plants and other strange creatures they saw while cruising.
Duke turned to Clara and moaned, “You should really go down into the caves with me.”
“What? You afraid, big guy? Just stay on comms, and keep talking to me while you’re down there. And don’t forget to collect samples from both the dead and living species you encounter. No need to rush. Observation is crucial.”
Duke grimaced, and then cautiously entered the dark tunnel mouth in the region Gabriel specified as dangerous. The only source of light was the round auras from the floating light bulbs left behind. “I’m already missing the giant lobsters and insects from Corina-12. At least I could see them. Come along, you tin cans.”
Duke waved his hand at ELIA’s drones.
One drone answered, “That’s rich. The pot calling the kettle black.”
The darkness increased as they probed deeper into the caverns. Duke kept calm, switching to night vision. He followed Clara’s advice, describing everything he observed like a child, “Temperature is dropping as we descend. Mold blobs are all over the walls. Why do they need hard carapaces? Is something eating them? Are you sure there’s nothing big in here?
“I’m trying to figure out what sort of person this Gabriel was,” Clara answered. “He must have had a motive for pursuing research down there, like proving his family wrong. Or maybe he freaked his family out.”
“I don't think that's the case. When I was working in the mines of Goria, from time to time, our digging machines would get stuck because of some hard, strange crystalline structured minerals. The entire digging operation stopped, and someone had to come and blast them. It didn't matter how good our machines were. These types of hard-to-break rocks would eventually appear.”
Duke continued, “Stupid bot! The humidity is rising in the cavern the deeper we go. Puddles are forming on the cavern floor. There’s a weird fog up ahead. The drones are slowing down, and the moisture is affecting their propellers. I’m going to retreat. I’ll need different equipment if we need to go deeper. Wait! There’s another species on the dome. Looks like a medium-sized mantis spider. It has like, ah... sixteen legs. Is it paralyzed?”
Clara muttered, “That’s weird. Sounds like you’ve found a strange new species. It supports my theory that this planet is just an evolutionary misfire. Their project made and keeps generating a variety of mutant anomalies. Collect it.”
“The carapaces make it hard to scan them or take samples. I’m pulling one off the wall. They appear to be a mix of mold and sedimentary rock. As if the strata fused with the creature… In the bag you go, little fella.”
“So, are you afraid we may be dealing with dangerous ements here? We are investigating people. Not rocks, Duke.”
“Ho! What’s this? There are traces of fighting everywhere. Something is chewing on the rocks. Is it the mold blobs or some other beastie? I don’t see any bones or biological remains. And the stalagmites are covered with a rainbow colored dust.”
One drone crashed into a stalactite and fell.
Duke answered, “I’m not touching that thing! Besides, I think it’s dead. But for how long is anybody’s guess? Could be a fossil.”
Clara remembered the ship’s orders, “EILA wants extinct species. Collect it!”
A human-sized eight-eyed black gorilla-bat surprised Duke, flying straight at him aggressively. He jumped aside. The drones fired at the creature. The bat bobbed and weaved as it came around for another pass at Duke.
The stray drone blasts hit the cave vault. They started a tunnel collapse, blocking their path out. Duke cursed as the falling rocks struck him, but they took down the bat thing. Luckily, he avoided being buried beneath the debris.
“Help, Clara! The drones caused a cave-in. I’m trapped!” Duke cried out on the comm link. “What the… what was that thing?! Damn, it got me! My arm has a strange blue-black goo on it.”
“Take your arm off, Duke. Quick! Limit your exposure to it. It may infect the rest of your system.”
The remaining drones attacked his
shoulder fixators and once loosened; he activated explosive bolts and tore his arm off, tossing it away. He stared in horror as the goo ate through the synthetic skin and melted the alloy endoskeleton beneath. Sparks flew from the residual charge in the arm.
Clara said, “I’ll dig you out. Don’t worry, Duke. I’m on my way with excavators. Hang on, help’s coming.”
Two hours later, they left the cave.
They spotted even more animals in and around the ship as they returned. There were more insects, an impenetrable cloud, with flocks of birds diving in and out, gorging on them. And worse, now there were reptiles.
Duke swatted at the buzzing insects and kicked lizard-like centipedes out of the way. He was sick of this planet.
EILA kept firing her lasers, the rate rising by the minute.
Duke, Clara, and the remaining drones entered the airlock, along with five unwanted species.
“Kill those things, and sterilize our suits, EILA!” shouted Clara, covered in animal blood from the falling creatures.
nitely. This area is quiet. It’s peaceful here. No danger.”
Clara responded, “Screw that! We must abort this mission. EILA informed us the ship is contaminated. Multiple species, micro and macro. Duke lost an arm to one of them. This planet isn’t safe. We need off this world, now! Then we can space these creatures and reassess.”
Mark ignored Clara. “EILA, come to me. That’s an order.”
find any animals that snuck onboard with Clara and Duke?”
EILA answered, “I did, and euthanized the larger ones. I’m cleaning up the mess they left.”
Maui asked, “Great, so we can leave this planet. Right?”
Mark ordered, “Indeed. EILA, take us into orbit. Then vent the ship to clear any microbes we took onboard.”
Clara approached them, noting, “It might not be enough. You know that, right?”
EILA ignored her. “By your command, Captain. Lifting off.”
Mark overheard her order on the comm link and contacted her to assess the situation on the ship. “What’s happening now, Clara?! Duke?!”
Duke said, “I’m with Clara in the airlock. We are under attack. The number of animals around the ship has grown significantly.”
Maui cut in. “Get over here, you two. EILA can’t protect the ship indefi-
The ship rose from the ground, while Clara and Duke were still in the airlock, and traversed the sixty kilometers to the green area. As it set down, EILA sent out an allpoints
bul- letin, “This is a crew recall. All team members return to the ship immediately.”
Mark and Maui entered EILA, amazed to find a mess of dead animals still in the airlock. Duke and Clara were already back inside.
Maui collected samples, then Mark kicked the carcasses out of the ship. As the airlock cycled, EILA announced, “Ship’s complement complete.”
Mark asked the ship, “EILA, did you
Clara was still cleaning rainbow colored dust off her armor with a towel in the briefing room when everybody gathered.
Mark started the debrief. “Clara, did you find anything in that logbook you think is important?”
“I haven’t finished reading it yet. But so far, no. Duke interrupted me when he ran into trouble in the cave. I went to help.”
Mark nodded. “Well, you finish your reading, Clara. In the meantime, I’ll begin the analysis of the dead animal tissue samples we collected.”
“Will do, Cap. And hey, for a change, I got to save the big lug!”
“That’s the last time I get saved by a gynoid! Listen, Mark. That place was, as advertised, a nightmare. I could use some virtual reality time. And a recharge.”
“Sure.” Mark nodded.
“Wanna join me, Maui?” Duke
asked, while Maui installed his new arm.
Maui grinned. “Heck yeah! I’m game.”
Mark headed for the lab, and Clara picked up the logbook.
Both Duke and Maui connected a cable to their necks and reclined. Their view morphed into a paradise beach with umbrellas stuck in sweaty coconut drinks. In no time, they were drunk on virtual reality.
Clara glanced at them enviously as they smacked their lips.
Mark noted the animals were all made from the same sub stance — a genetic substrate difficult for EILA’s bots to clean. He wasn’t sure if they were making progress with the goose-like thing on the bench. Its skin spread more and more, like they were rolling out dough. The bench where they worked had delicate streams of color spreading out over it.
Slowly, a thin, almost invisible smoke drifted from the tissue. Something similar to the fog Duke described in the cavern. He found the smoke quite unusual but ignored it, thinking it was just a release of proteins from EILA’s tissue preparation.
itiveness, and curiosity into their behavior profiles.”
“Well, that might explain the strange behavior of those insects and birds. Maybe they were curious about the ship and trying to explore it. Usually, wild creatures would steer clear of something the size of EILA.”
Clara continued, “Certainly. But in this case, their curiosity, spurred by their sense of territoriality and competition, made them attack EILA, I think. But this was not what Gabriel or his family intended. At least not initially. Their aggressiveness, anyway. And that’s what’s worrying me… At some point,
to their needs in a matter of minutes, hours, or days. Their minds alone couldn’t control these changes. Instead, their bodies would detect and organize a new environment, then alter their genetics along with it to adapt optimally.’
“Mark, I think the animals of Iris1412 could not only coordinate their attacks, but also share subconscious directives with the plants, fungus, and everything else they needed.”
“Intriguing theory, Clara.”
“This is where the logbook ends,” Clara said, running into the lab to show Mark the last phrase Gabriel wrote:
Mark knew something was off, so he called Clara on the intercom. “Clara, can you check the last pages of the logbook? Something is odd here with these tissue samples.”
Clara answered, “OK, Cap.” A few minutes later, she called him back, “Hey, Mark! Listen up!”
“What?!”
“Gabriel and the family were trying to combine animal territoriality, compet-
Gabriel’s primary aim was to make animals understand their environment, not destroy it. He wrote here:
‘Imagine a planet’s ecosystem shaped by them! Creatures capable of rapidly responding to crises, using vast amounts of combined experience in survival skills gathered from their experience on evolution. An ecosystem that they can adapt to their will like a virus. They take control of everything. The entire spectrum of habitats adjusted
“This families’ project was their ultimate folly. They fell victim to delusions of grandeur, probably,” Mark speculated. Still, he resisted the thought they also were at risk. Clara remained silent. Mark weighed his concerns, suspecting the rainbow colored dust released from the animals was dangerous. “EILA, can you detect any other life forms from the planet infesting the ship?”
EILA answered, “Heat sensors and motion detectors aren’t perceiving alien entities onboard. However, my sensors may ignore species not currently on file in my data banks. I also may not classify an alien species as a living thing. For example, I can’t detect prions. This ship may contain viruses, bacteria, fungi, and tiny insects that entered the airlock without my recognition.”
Mark turned to Clara and asked, “Clara, how much risk do you think these unidentified entities pose to us and the GA?”
“I think we should contact the GA before we dock anywhere and put
everything under quarantine, including ourselves.”
“Based on the closest ship to our location, it will take a team ten years to reach us. Any suggestions on what we should do against such a contagion? By then, the threat could overrun us.”
“Hmm, we could perform micro-scans of the ship, and kill anything we find. Or… Yes! Here’s a better idea! We could expose the ship to the intense radiation of Iris and sterilize the vessel. We could survive that, but any microbes would not.”
“Good thinking. Plus, we’ll vent the ship’s residual atmosphere into space. Anything not adapted to the vacuum would die.”
Mark and Clara disconnected Maui and Duke from their virtual vacation and explained the plan.
They all hung up their clothes and armor on improvised lines like they were disrobing at a nude beach, and EILA maneuvered them into proximity with the star. Maui liked the freedom of being naked, just like in virtual reality, saying, “You know, Clara. This is one crazy plan, but check out the view!”
After admiring the team, Mark dismissed the oglers and turned serious. “Look, guys, EILA may not survive this maneuver. But it’s the only way to be sure we have sterilized ourselves and the ship. I know it’s a crazy plan diving into a star, but we must protect the GA from genetic contamination.”
Duke took it in stride. “I may not have signed up for being naked with you cyborgs, but I’m telling ya, we can survive this radiation. I mean, it can’t be worse than Iris-1412, can it?”
For a moment, everyone believed Clara’s plan would work, but the rainbow colored dust got thicker inside the ship as they dove into the star. Visibility was dropping steadily as they orbited inside Iris’s chromosphere, going even deeper than planned. Everyone malfunctioned, as if something was draining their energy.
Duke collapsed and drifted out of the airlock off the ship.
Everyone’s operating speed slowed, and they couldn’t correct their downward spiral toward inoperability.
The mold blobs Duke collected in the caverns sprouted all over EILA and grew inside her superstructure.
Clara used her last strength to instruct the ship, “EILA…Send a signal... Tell the GA it’s an emergen-
cy... We need backup… EILA? EILA?!”
Mark ordered, “We’ve lost containment. EILA set for self-destruct.”
“She’s not r-r-responding to our commands, Mark. EILA just went off line!” Maui stuttered. She lacked the power to speak further.
The ship, directed by the blobs, stabilized its orbit. Gabriel’s voice vibrated from the minuscule dance of biological particles in Mark’s ears. “Life has no form. It’s an idea. We are taking over your ship. We are taking over your species. Backup will arrive without a clue of what happened, and we will infect them, too. And we will keep infecting the GA until we control everyone and everything. Thank you, Mark. Your crew saved us.”
The mold blobs slowly replaced parts of the ship, scattering others throughout space until all that remained were particles floating in the cosmos. Meanwhile, the remains of the inundated and contaminated wreckage floated at the Lagrange point. And a strange mist near the bright star patiently waited for more curious explorers to arrive.
By Humphrey Price
The Rubicon had been crossed, and there was no turning back. After its release, the bomb would drift slowly toward the asteroid drawn by its minuscule gravitational pull and detonate 300 meters above the surface, the distance optimized for maximum effectiveness.”
It was almost a pretty asteroid, if an asteroid could ever be called pretty. It didn’t look like a dog turd, or one of those ugly rubble piles, or a binary pair stuck together like a dumbbell. The mountain-sized chunk of iron and rock was roundish and dark with a nice rusty patina and not pummeled and torn up by craters. It was on a path to impact Earth in less than a year.
Captain Inaya Torsney of the U.S. Space Force parked her ship in a precise location 850 meters from the asteroid’s surface. “TJ, can you confirm Bad Boy is nominal for deployment?”
The nuclear weapons expert replied, “Yes, Captain, the weapon is showing green across the board. The device is ready for arming.”
There were only the two of them aboard the Aeolus. They couldn’t carry more mass to support a larger crew. Space Force threw everything together in a race against time, because the only workable departure window for the mission was just one month after the asteroid’s discovery.
Arming the one point two megaton weapon required
each of them to enter a code and then turn a key simultaneously from separate stations, similar to the failsafe protocols used in the old missile silos. After completing the mission checklist, Captain Torsney said, “I am go for arming. TJ?”
The nuclear physicist muttered under his breath, “Lord, thy will be done.” Then he raised his voice and said, “Yes, Captain, we are go for arming.”
TJ had a flashback of being beaten by his father after failing to memorize a scripture correctly in the unorthodox religious cult he raised him in. This is for you, Father.
The young girl stood before the defeated alien army. The itching of their dying collective minds annoyed her. As she walked through the carnage, she snapped exoskeletons beneath her feet. Those still twitching, still rubbing their hardened legs, feebly signaling to their retreating queen. She conspired alone. Alone, she destroyed. She enjoyed her power. It was a gift from her abductors. Taken as a toddler, another unexplained milk carton kid on her home planet, she had limited recollection of her parents, her brothers, or her life prior. Her abductors chose her based on her fetal potential. They had closely monitored her mother’s pregnancy. Joshua, her, also showed promise, but, she was the culmination of eons of planned manipulation of all the Homo sapiens best traits.
“Ready on my count,” Torsney called. “Three, two, one, arm.” They turned both keys simultaneously. “Weapon’s hot. I confirm arming and timer countdown start. Detonation will be in thirty-five minutes.”
Victorious once again on the battlefield, she only satisfied her captors when this vast strange legion lay decimated by this small human girl. The child knew her task was not yet complete. She walked barefoot across the torched terrain. She alone reduced this once beautiful
The Department of Defense pulled the H-bomb from their stockpile with minimal modifications and without enough time to develop anything more sophisticated than a simple non-abort timer that was irreversible. The Rubicon had been crossed, and there was no turning back. After its release, the bomb would drift slowly toward the asteroid drawn by its minuscule gravitational pull and detonate 300 meters above the surface, the distance optimized for maximum effectiveness.
The thirty-five minutes would provide adequate time for them to maneuver Aeolus to a safe distance and escape the deadly radiation
and debris. The asteroid seemed solid enough, but there was a slight chance it could shatter and break apart, so getting as far away as possible was paramount.
emerald forest to embers dying in the morning light. Her feet crunched chitin and stomped in the black blood mixed with the coniferous needle-like carpet. Her destination stood before her, the Great Sequoia.
“I confirm we are at zero velocity relative to the target, within the margin of error. Preparing to release Bad Boy and initiate thruster maneuvers to slowly back away from the weapon.”
A thousand year old organic edifice. Their temple, their castle, their home. It was the last of the planet’s civilizations. Once green, the orb giant glowed orange. From the sky, the victors watched it burn as they toasted themselves smarter, better, superior.
TJ said, “Wait. Don’t jettison, Captain. I’m reading a temperature spike on the warhead that is out of spec. The outer casing sensor shows 55 degrees C. That’s 25 degrees above the maximum allowable at separation. That’s outside our test qualification for the detonator. The device should be in shadow, but I’m wondering if there is some way it’s in sunlight.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. I’m looking at the camera view now, and everything is nominal. There’s no way it’s illuminated. It’s got to be an anomalous reading.”
The ravager arrived at the massive tree that served as a bastion for their queen. Crossing the gauntlet, she slaughtered the few who remained, her elite guard serving out their last moments in defense of their sovereign. Never touching with hand or weapon, it was the sheer force of her mind and will that crushed their chitin skulls, boiling their insect eyes and ripping their limbs from their segmented bodies. While it gave her no satisfaction to annihilate these creatures, deep down she understood it was her destiny.
The queen stood defiant, alone, sur-
“The camera shows only an axial view from one end. We can’t see all the way around it. Go into the cupola and get a visual on whether the side of the device is in the sun or in shadow. We can’t make a mistake.”
“What can we do anyway if it’s in the sun?”
“We could maneuver the ship to put it in shadow, Captain. Allowing ten minutes for it to cool down then release, we’ll still have plenty of time to get to a minimum safe distance.”
rounded by her fallen loyal servants. “Why have you come here? What do you want?” The queen demanded with clacking mandibles.
“Your destruction,” the young human stepped closer.
Torsney thought, This is a waste of valuable time. The clock is ticking for our escape maneuver, and I need to offload the bomb now that we have it properly positioned. The more distance we can put between us and the bomb, the better. “Keep her steady, Ko.” Torsney unstrapped from the command chair and pushed off toward the open hatch into the cupola.
The Queen stood her ground. “We have done nothing to inspire your anger. My kind has taken nothing that is not rightly ours. This wood, this world, is our domain. We exist in peace."
The girl agreed. She destroyed without judgment, without remorse. It was the reason she existed. “It is because they will it.” Her eyes went skyward. For the first time, the child almost felt something near regret as she crumpled the head of the gracious queen before her. The delicate whispering wings fluttered in the monarch’s death throes.
The U.S. Space Force Planetary Defense Wing discovered the object eight months earlier using a secret space-based telescope. No other land or space observatories would be in a proper view angle to discover the asteroid until just days before impact.
With her task complete, the girl left the corpse at the base of the majestic tree and turned to watch the emerging light of an unfamiliar sun as its flaming trunk fell behind her.
Probability predictions gave it a fifty-three percent chance of striking Earth and a forty-seven percent chance of just whizzing by in a near miss. If it hit, it would cause a global disaster, possibly resulting in the end of civilization as we know it.
Wordlessly she announced, “It is done.” Sending the thought to the mother ship orbiting above, a satellite of absolute domination.
They kept the discovery secret at the highest levels of government. President Remkin was worried that an announcement would send the global economy into a tailspin, and there was an election coming up. The economy was currently strong, and the president’s popularity was at an all-time high. As a result, only a few cleared individuals were aware of the asteroid and the mission.
Her captors, the only family she had ever known, were pleased and told her so. Heart swelling, she deferred to her kidnappers as her only source of parental guidance. She would question their motives on this strange planet, yet they wished her to destroy only because she could. It amused them to witness her exercise her powers.
The ravager smiled, feeling a small remnant of human pride. They would allow her to eat now and hopefully rest before they traveled to the next civilization, selected for destruction by her hand.
General George Strouding, Chief of Space Operations, assured the president that they could deflect the gargantuan space rock in time to ensure it would not impact on Earth. If they failed, well, there really wasn’t a Plan B, anyway. There was no reason to inform the public and create mass panic.
Captain Torsney was a natural-born U.S. citizen of French Moroccan descent and the top pilot in the Space Force, steely calm under pressure, with many critical missions under her belt. She was the obvious choice for the mission.
They assigned Torsney to the mission with only a two-week notice
and paired her with a weapons specialist whom she had never met. Thomas Jefferson Ng Ko, named to honor his mixed heritage, was a taciturn introvert. He had kept to himself the whole voyage, which was okay with Torsney, although she thought he was creepy and weird. He read his Bible and prayed daily, which she considered admirable since her family upbringing was as a Christian French Moroccan. With only a couple of weeks to throw the crew together, there hadn’t been time for the usual psych screening.
Torsney floated up into the cylindrical cupola that extended out from the side of the spacecraft with wraparound viewing windows. The cupola also doubled as the airlock for EVAs. She yelled out, “TJ, I’m looking at Bad Boy, and it’s completely in shadow.” The device was the size and shape of a household hot water heater.
“Are you all the way up in the cupola?”
TJ’s voice sounded closer, so she didn’t have to yell. “Yeah, this is the best viewing angle I can get.”
“Look around and see if there might be reflections off the ship’s solar arrays or something else.”
“Sure, but this is getting to be a waste of…” The hatch to the cupola slammed shut with a loud clang, and she heard the locks engage. “What the…TJ!” She turned around and fumbled with the hatch locking system to open it, but TJ had somehow jammed it shut. He had planned this in advance.
Torsney yelled, “TJ! Open the damn hatch! What the hell is going on?” She banged on the hatch in frustration, bruising her hands. Cursing, she noticed shadows shifting in the cupola. The sun’s direction was changing. Her body was also turning relative to the spacecraft. The nuclear physicist was rotating the ship.
Torsney went back to the top of the cupola to see where the vehi-
cle was now pointed. It was in transit toward the limb of the asteroid. She was drifting back against the side of the enclosure and could feel the wall press against her.
The ship was accelerating. TJ was piloting the vehicle to a new location, but where? She watched in horror as the asteroid grew larger, and the ship made a close flyby on the way to the opposite side of their target. Then she knew TJ was going to set the bomb off on the wrong side and make sure the asteroid hits Earth!
She found herself confronted with a world ending dilemma. When the bomb detonated at the prescribed distance, it would vaporize about two meters off the side of the asteroid. That vaporized material would blast away into space at high velocity and act like a rocket, propelling the massive asteroid slightly off its present course by about forty centimeters per second.
That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it would be enough to move it 6,000 kilometers in six months. This was supposed to be in just the right direction so that it would completely miss the Earth. Only now, based on repositioning of the warhead, TJ planned to drive the asteroid directly toward Earth, assuring its deadly impact, and striking the world dead on. There was no doubt in her mind. Now she knew, The man’s a total nutcase!
Desperate to re-enter the main cabin, she frantically searched for tools in the cupola. There was an EVA
suit, a tether, and that’s about it. The standard tool sets and jet pack maneuvering unit were in storage in the main cabin. Then she thought of one more thing. Fumbling in a pouch in the EVA spacesuit, Torsney found a Space Force standard issue: Space Army Knife, the SAK. Besides a knife, the handheld tool set contained a tiny rotary drill, a reciprocating saw, ceramic blade scissors, screwdrivers, and a laser. Torsney checked the miniature strontium 90 radioisotope thermoelectric generator with beta shielding, which charged a super-capacitor to power the SAK. It was nominal.
She tried hacking the lock, then switched to the hinges of the hatch using the drill, saw, and laser, but quickly grew frustrated at her inability to make any headway against its solid construction. There was just no way she was going to force her way in with such a low-powered tool.
TJ finally noticed the noises coming from the hatch breaching attempts and activated the intercom system to the cupola. “You will not break through in time, Captain,” he said in a detached monotone voice. “And if you do, I am prepared to kill you. You cannot thwart the will of God. He guided this instrument of His will to smite the Earth in accordance with His prophecies. I am here as His agent to see it through. God has told me that His name for
this divine asteroid is Wormwood.”
“This isn’t God’s will, TJ, it’s your will, and I need you to let me inside to get our mission back on track.”
“God placed Wormwood on its present course for His purpose, as described in the Book of Revelation.”
“But God also gave us the ability to detect it and change its course.”
How do I argue with this lunatic? Torsney struggled to remember some of her biblical studies from college. “God gave us dominion over the Earth. It’s our choice to save it.”
The young girl stood before the defeated alien army. The itching of their dying collective minds annoyed her. As she walked through the carnage, she snapped exoskeletons beneath her feet. Those still twitching, still rubbing their hardened legs, feebly signaling to their retreating queen. She conspired alone. Alone, she destroyed. She enjoyed her power. It was a gift from her abductors. Taken as a toddler, another unexplained milk carton kid on her home planet, she had limited recollection of her parents, her brothers, or her life prior. Her abductors chose her based on her fetal potential. They had closely monitored her mother’s pregnancy. Joshua, her, also showed promise, but, she was the culmination of eons of planned manipulation of all the Homo sapiens best traits.
TJ began loudly quoting from the Bible. “The present heavens and the Earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment. The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the Earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” With a lowered voice, he said, “Captain, this conversation is over. We will meet God in a matter of minutes. Peace be with you, my friend. I’m shutting off the comm.”
Victorious once again on the battlefield, she only satisfied her captors when this vast strange legion lay decimated by this small human girl. The child knew her task was not yet complete. She walked barefoot across the torched terrain. She alone reduced this once beautiful
The scientist switched off Torsney’s end of the comm link, but in error left his end of the link active, so she continued to hear TJ’s ongoing recitation of scriptures.
“In keeping with His promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new Earth…”
Torsney tried to tune out TJ and focus on something actionable. There was only one other way inside Aeolus, through the side docking
hatch. She scrambled into the EVA suit, bypassing all system checks, to exit the airlock as quickly as possible. Emerging into space, she used handholds to transit from the cupola to the docking hatch amidship on the side of the cylindrical vehicle. Over the suit comm, Torsney could hear TJ ranting, since the suit comm and cupola intercom were slaved together.
emerald forest to embers dying in the morning light. Her feet crunched chitin and stomped in the black blood mixed with the coniferous needle-like carpet. Her destination stood before her, the Great Sequoia. A thousand year old organic edifice. Their temple, their castle, their home. It was the last of the planet’s civilizations. Once green, the orb giant glowed orange. From the sky, the victors watched it burn as they toasted themselves smarter, better, superior.
“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
The ravager arrived at the massive tree that served as a bastion for their queen. Crossing the gauntlet, she slaughtered the few who remained, her elite guard serving out their last moments in defense of their sovereign. Never touching with hand or weapon, it was the sheer force of her mind and will that crushed their chitin skulls, boiling their insect eyes and ripping their limbs from their segmented bodies. While it gave her no satisfaction to annihilate these creatures, deep down she understood it was her destiny.
Without warning, the ship lurched beneath her, and she ended up desperately clutching a bar with one hand as her body jerked away from the fuselage. Still holding on, she wondered, Is TJ trying to throw me off?
The asteroid came into view, and she could see how close they were. No, he’s doing the final maneuvering to get into position. Suddenly, the ship reversed direction, and her body slammed against the side of the ship. It was enough for Torsney to lose her grip.
The queen stood defiant, alone, sur-
In her haste, she had neglected to attach a safety tether, so when the ship stopped accelerating, she bounced away into free space, struggling in vain to find something to hold on to. Her flailing made her tumble, and all there was to grab
rounded by her fallen loyal servants. “Why have you come here? What do you want?” The queen demanded with clacking mandibles.
onto was vacuum. Spinning uncontrolled and disoriented, she had no way to stabilize her rotation since she had no jet pack.
“Your destruction,” the young human stepped closer.
The Queen stood her ground. “We have done nothing to inspire your anger. My kind has taken nothing that is not rightly ours. This wood, this world, is our domain. We exist in peace."
The asteroid and the sun appeared to be rapidly spinning around her, as was the Aeolus, which was drifting away. She moved into a curled up position, remembering the trick of extending her arms and legs like a skater to reduce her angular rotation just enough to regain her bearings and get situational awareness.
The girl agreed. She destroyed without judgment, without remorse. It was the reason she existed. “It is because they will it.” Her eyes went skyward. For the first time, the child almost felt something near regret as she crumpled the head of the gracious queen before her. The delicate whispering wings fluttered in the monarch’s death throes.
The ship was now on station at the exact wrong side of the asteroid and holding position at what looked like the targeted distance for detonation. Apparently, TJ was not planning to eject the bomb and was going to use the ship to maintain the positioning of Bad Boy. He was planning on suicide for both of them.
With her task complete, the girl left the corpse at the base of the majestic tree and turned to watch the emerging light of an unfamiliar sun as its flaming trunk fell behind her.
Wordlessly she announced, “It is done.” Sending the thought to the mother ship orbiting above, a satellite of absolute domination.
I’m as good as dead, adrift in space, and there’s no way to save the Earth from destruction. Her temples were pounding, and she fought rising panic despite her training. Struggling to clear her head, she was rapidly receding from the Aeolus. The helmet’s head up display (HUD) showed nineteen minutes remaining to detonation.
She saw the suit had over six hours of remaining oxygen plus the twenty-minute safety reserve cylinder, not that she would need all that. The thermonuclear explosion would vaporize her long before then. The safety reserve cylinder! It was a crazy long shot.
Her captors, the only family she had ever known, were pleased and told her so. Heart swelling, she deferred to her kidnappers as her only source of parental guidance. She would question their motives on this strange planet, yet they wished her to destroy only because she could. It amused them to witness her exercise her powers.
The ravager smiled, feeling a small remnant of human pride. They would allow her to eat now and hopefully rest before they traveled to the next civilization, selected for destruction by her hand.
The cylinder was the size of a large soda bottle strapped to her left thigh. She closed the hand valve, unscrewed the feed hose, and removed the emergency oxygen tank. Cradling it in her left armpit, she cracked open the valve so that the pressurized air could escape. Gripping the bottle tightly with both hands, she could steer using the jet of gas like a rocket engine.
It horrified Torsney to see her rotation rate rapidly increasing. Overcome by dizziness, she couldn’t tell which direction she was thrusting and almost lost her grip on the spewing tank. Twisting the bottle around randomly, she finally got the hang of it and could de-tumble and
stabilize her angular rotation.
The bottle kept thrusting her somewhere, but where? She could see the sun and the asteroid, but not the ship. Oh my god, where’s the Aeolus? She desperately scanned the surrounding blackness. Can I pick it out from the stars? Then she saw it, somewhat brighter than the stars, and steered the bottle to propel herself back toward the vehicle.
Please, please have enough gas left to get me there! As the ship loomed larger, she aimed toward the docking hatch, but her approach was too fast.
She reversed the direction of the air jet to arrest her speed, but she still hit hard against the side of the ship. In pain, she lost her hold on the bottle, and it went jetting off into space.
Miraculously, she could scramble and grabbed one of the EVA handholds before she drifted off again. Hyperventilating, Torsney clipped on a safety tether from her suit and lost no time traversing to the docking hatch. Now how the hell do I get it open?
The problem was that the hatch opened inward, and the interior air pressure exerted a force of more than a ton on the hatch, so the spaceship would need to have all its air evacuated to equalize with the vacuum before she could force it open. Torsney looked through the round porthole in the docking hatch to see if she could get a glimpse of her psycho cohort. She couldn’t see him, but thought, here’s the weak spot. It was a double-paned acrylic window, and she might be able to melt through the plastic with the laser on her Space Army Knife.
She got to work, pleased to see that the miniature laser was cutting through the acrylic. Torsney worried there wouldn’t be enough charge in the SAK to power it long enough to get through both layers of the porthole. Once she had popped out the first pane, cutting around the perimeter until it broke free, she flung it away, exposing the inner pane. She began cutting carefully through the second pane, working her way around the edge in a circle,
melting through it a little at a time.
She didn’t want to cut all the way through until the whole pane was ready to break free. The dropping cabin pressure from any escaping air would set off an alarm, alerting TJ, not that he would notice, since he was loudly chanting scriptures.
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters…”
She was almost through the second window pane when the laser petered out. Dammit, so close! Now she had to wait for the radioisotope power source to charge up the super-capacitor. She glanced at the countdown clock in her HUD.
Eleven minutes to detonation. She helplessly waited. Not enough time! Then at the nine-minute mark, Torsney took a gamble and fired up the laser once more. Its energy level was feeble, but she only had a little way to go. She worked the beam around the weakened edges of the window, and it bulged ominously under the internal pressure.
TJ was still at it, repeating the psalm over and over. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”
The window blew free, and she ducked away as it shot off into space, the air rushing out of the ship in a violent blast. Loose papers and debris sucked out in the stream. As she waited for the air to evacuate, she worked out how to reach in and jimmy the hatch open, then checked
the time. Eight minutes.
She could see TJ just inside the hatch trying to place some kind of plate over the gaping hole to plug the leak. Just before he could get it into position, she kicked it out of the way with her heel.
TJ fumbled for it, but his arm got trapped in the escaping whirlwind of air that sucked out of the hole. Torsney grabbed the arm and held on. The air inside the Aeolus was almost gone. TJ struggled violently as the air left his lungs, and then his arm went slack.
She forced the hatch open and pushed it inward. Torsney entered head-first and forced her gaze away from TJ’s drifting body. There was no time for sentimentality. She kicked her way to the command chair and strapped in. Activating the thrusters, she rotated the Aeolus and fired up the main engines at maximum thrust. Six minutes.
Having done many simulations of the operation on the trip out and being familiar with landmarks on the asteroid, she barnstormed around the massive space rock to the other side, flying by the seat of her pants without taking time to set up any navigation aids. Torsney arrived at more or less the correct position for detonation and eyeballed the drift rate relative to the asteroid.
Good enough. Four minutes left.
But she knew she wouldn’t be able to put enough distance between the detonation and the ship.
Torsney released the hydrogen bomb and slowly backed Aeolus away from the warhead. A bump against her side startled her, and a hand slid over her helmet’s faceplate. Stifling a scream, she realized it was TJ’s dead body floating around her. Then his face appeared like a frozen zombie drifting in front of her field of vision, obscuring the control panel. His expression of terror was hideous.
The young girl stood before the defeated alien army. The itching of their dying collective minds annoyed her. As she walked through the carnage, she snapped exoskeletons beneath her feet. Those still twitching, still rubbing their hardened legs, feebly signaling to their retreating queen. She conspired alone. Alone, she destroyed. She enjoyed her power. It was a gift from her abductors. Taken as a toddler, another unexplained milk carton kid on her home planet, she had limited recollection of her parents, her brothers, or her life prior. Her abductors chose her based on her fetal potential. They had closely monitored her mother’s pregnancy. Joshua, her, also showed promise, but, she was the culmination of eons of planned manipulation of all the Homo sapiens best traits.
Fighting back tears at the sight of her dead crewmate, she unstrapped from the seat and quickly towed TJ over to the open hatch to deep six his remains out into the void in a hasty burial at sea. As she watched her companion of the past half year float away, she thought, The crazy SOB will get blown into atoms by his own bomb
Victorious once again on the battlefield, she only satisfied her captors when this vast strange legion lay decimated by this small human girl.
The Space Force captain returned to the command console, strapped in, and checked the time. Less than two minutes to go. Not enough time to get to a minimum safe distance, even at full thrust. Then she remembered TJ’s last words, “…the shadow of death…” No, she thought, it’s not the shadow of death, it’s the shadow of life!
thousand year old organic edifice. Their temple, their castle, their home. It was the last of the planet’s civilizations. Once green, the orb giant glowed orange. From the sky, the victors watched it burn as they toasted themselves smarter, better, superior.
blasted at full thrust toward the limb of the asteroid. Just as she rounded the edge to the other side, the black sky lit up with a red glow. She stared in wonder at the dark round chunk of rock surrounded by a ring of fire as vaporized material flew off from the surface on the opposite side that was under ground zero for the thermonuclear blast.
foam and space-qualified duct tape. Good luck indeed.
The girl agreed. She destroyed without judgment, without remorse. It was the reason she existed. “It is because they will it.” Her eyes went skyward. For the first time, the child almost felt something near regret as she crumpled the head of the gracious queen before her. The delicate whispering wings fluttered in the monarch’s death throes.
After re-pressurizing the cabin, she transmitted an encrypted message to Space Command, debriefing them on the mission, along with the recorded cabin video of all that had transpired. Three hours later, she received an audio response from General Strouding.
Torsney rotated the ship and
The child knew her task was not yet complete. She walked barefoot across the torched terrain. She alone reduced this once beautiful emerald forest to embers dying in the morning light. Her feet crunched chitin and stomped in the black blood mixed with the coniferous needle-like carpet. Her destination stood before her, the Great Sequoia. A
The ravager arrived at the massive tree that served as a bastion for their queen. Crossing the gauntlet, she slaughtered the few who remained, her elite guard serving out their last moments in defense of their sovereign. Never touching with hand or weapon, it was the sheer force of her mind and will that crushed their chitin skulls, boiling their insect eyes and ripping their limbs from their segmented bodies. While it gave her no satisfaction to annihilate these creatures, deep down she understood it was her destiny.
It was like looking at a total solar eclipse from an enormous moon that was right in front of her face. The asteroid held together and did not break apart. She was safe and shielded from the deadly radiation in the great rock’s shadow.
She fired thrusters to stabilize Aeolus’ position on the opposite side of the asteroid from ground zero, protected from the hazardous residual radiation. As her heart rate and respiration slowed, the adrenaline burned off for the first time in the past half hour. She felt spent and exhausted as she gazed around the cabin. What a mess.
The queen stood defiant, alone, surrounded by her fallen loyal servants. “Why have you come here? What do you want?” The queen demanded with clacking mandibles.
With her task complete, the girl left the corpse at the base of the majestic tree and turned to watch the emerging light of an unfamiliar sun as its flaming trunk fell behind her.
Wordlessly she announced, “It is done.” Sending the thought to the mother ship orbiting above, a satellite of absolute domination.
“Outstanding work, Captain Torsney. You will receive some nice shiny medals from the Space Force and President Remkin, but the true nature of the mission will remain classified at the highest levels of secrecy. The President will announce that Asteroid 2045 XL was discovered and determined to be on a trajectory for a close but certain near miss of the Earth.
Her captors, the only family she had ever known, were pleased and told her so. Heart swelling, she deferred to her kidnappers as her only source of parental guidance. She would question their motives on this strange planet, yet they wished her to destroy only because she could. It amused them to witness her exercise her powers.
“Your destruction,” the young human stepped closer.
The Queen stood her ground. “We have done nothing to inspire your anger. My kind has taken nothing that is not rightly ours. This wood, this world, is our domain. We exist in peace."
Torsney spotted the plate floating in the cabin that TJ had attempted to use to block the breach in the window. It was the ceremonial Moroccan brass wall plate that her mother had given her for the trip. The family heirloom was a good luck charm. She closed the hatch and made a seal for the broken window out of the plate, using quick setting patch
“The public story will be that your mission was to conduct a deflection experiment to provide an extra margin of safety for the Earth and to characterize our ability in the future to protect against large threats on short notice. Doctor Ko sadly suffered a fatal heart attack in the line of duty. You conducted a burial in space with full honors for him. Have a safe return trip, Captain Torsney, and godspeed.”
The ravager smiled, feeling a small remnant of human pride. They would allow her to eat now and hopefully rest before they traveled to the next civilization, selected for destruction by her hand.
Erik R. Andara was born in 1977 near the Dunkelsteinerwald in Austria, where he grew up in a secluded little hermitage on the edge of the forest.
He devoted himself to reading and telling stories as soon as he arrived on earth. When he was surprised to realize that this reality would continue to exist after he crossed over into the new millennium, he moved to Vienna in order to expand his search and gather further material for his stories from all corners of the multiverse. Nowadays, he mainly devotes himself to literary play with Weird Literary Shadows and the Dark Phantastik.
Eriks debut novel "Im Garten Numen" was released in German through the Darmstädter Publishing House Whitetrain.
G. V. Silva was born in São Paulo, Brazil. He holds a bachelor's and a master's degree in philosophy from the State University of Campinas and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Technical University of Berlin.
He is a freelance interpreter and a translator of German philosophical works into Portuguese (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Walter Benjamin, among others).
He is currently working on his debut sci-fi novel.
"Hope" to appear on November 6, 2023 in https://www.pikerpress. com
Mark is a novelist who supports his family by working as an attorney. He writes two-fisted, hardboiled, blood and guts pulp fiction and have four published novels and over ninety short stories (many as reprints) in the USA, UK, Canada, Ireland, and Denmark.
His crime fiction has appeared in Mysterical-E, Thuglit, Crimespree, Suspense, Noir Nation, and Yellow Mama. Horror fiction has been published in Hinnom, Deadman's Tome, Dark Gothic Resurrected, Infernal Ink, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Sex And Murder. A novella, Escape From Byzantium, won the 2010 Independent Publisher Silver Prize for SF/Fantasy. His work has recently appeared in Cirsova, Savage Realms, Dark Horses, and Tales From The Magician's Skull.
Alexander Philip Bird Fiction Contributor
Thomas Koperwas is a retired teacher living in Windsor, Ontario, Canada who writes short stories of horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction. His story Vacation won a Freedom Fiction Journal Top Crime Editor's Choice Award 2024. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming in: Anotherealm; Jakob’s Horror Box; Literally Stories; The Literary Hatchet; Literary Veganism; Bombfire; Pulp Modern Flash; Savage Planets; Dark Fire Fiction; The Sirens Call; Yellow Mama Webzine; 96th of October; Underside Stories; Danse Macabre; A Thin Slice Of Anxiety; Androids and Dragons; Chewers & Masticadores Canada; The Piker Press; Stupefying Stories Showcase; Metastellar; The Yard: Crime Blog; Blood Moon Rising Magazine; and many more.
Alexander P. Bird is a philosophy teacher from Brazil, born in Rio de Janeiro.
The stories that brought him to science fiction at an early age were the movie Metropolis, and a King Kong graphic novel.
He writes about science, philosophy and politics on Medium.com and is in a continuous battle against the most threatening kinds of dystopias.
Among other things, he considers himself an enthusiast of frescobol and Pokémon.
He is published in Sci-Fi Shorts, After The Storm, and AntipodeanSF.
https://medium.com/@ alexand3r-bird
Humphrey is a space systems engineer at NASA JPL, and I've had the pleasure of contributing to robotic exploration missions to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
One of his passions is pushing for human missions to Mars sooner rather than later.
His writings lean toward very realistic hard SciFi, but I also do some science fantasy. His two standalone novels are as of yet unpublished, and he's still seeking a venue for them that will have some level of readership.
You can read about his upcoming projects on his website.
https://humphreyprice.com
Submit your original work for consideration.
Contributions are always welcomed. Our goal is to create a community of science fiction artists and consumers in the same planetary system. Our editors will review your submissions and will select the best of the best for inclusion in our next edition! Aliens submit!
Have a great story to share? Submit your story to SavagePlanets for publication. If selected, your story will be displayed with images tailored to enhance it for all to enjoy. Submission guidelines are available by clicking the planetary icon or visiting our website.
Our poetry editor is eager to read your speculative poetry. Anything from the fantasy world to a reality you create within its rhymes. Once selected it will bring magic to these pages. To see our guidelines click on the comet icon or visit our website.
Herein, Multimedia replaces a thousand words. Art, photos, video clips, sculpture, and all other forms of visual manifestation are welcome. Challenge us to see the future through your eyes! Guidelines available by clicking the poly-form icon here, or visiting our website.
Look what happens when I hit it with this shrink ray! If you can tell a complete science fiction story in two sentences this is for you. Post your story on Twitter or Instagram at #SavagePlanets, and we might just feature it here. See rules by clicking on the rocket or visiting our site.
1. Pick any whole number between 1-10.
2. Double it!
3. Multiply the total by five.
4. Divide the answer by your original number.
5. Subtract seven. That's your fortune number! Many good fortunes! Only one bad fortune. Don't select the bad fortune. Good luck!
"3"
1. YOU’LL NAVIGATE THROUGH A METEOR SHOWER TO FIND A CELESTIAL OASIS BRIMMING WITH OTHERWORLDLY FLORA AND FAUNA. A PARADISE FOUND!
2. YOU’LL DECODE A MESSAGE FROM A DISTANT GALAXY, LEADING YOU TO AN ADVANCED CIVILIZATION EAGER TO SHARE THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY.
3. YOU’LL STUMBLE UPON AN ALIEN RAVE ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON. UNFORTUNATELY, YOU'RE THE PARTY SNACK. TIME TO MOONWALK YOUR WAY OUT OF THERE!
4. YOU’LL DISCOVER THE LEGENDARY FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH ON A REMOTE PLANET, GRANTING YOU VITALITY AND LONGEVITY. CHEERS TO ENDLESS ADVENTURES!
5. YOU’LL FIND A FRIENDLY ALIEN SPECIES THAT TEACHES YOU THE ART OF TELEPATHY, ENHANCING YOUR COMMUNICATION AND UNDERSTANDING.
6. YOU’LL COME ACROSS A COSMIC LIBRARY WITH THE UNIVERSE’S KNOWLEDGE, APPOINTING YOU AS ITS AMBASSADOR TO SHARE WISDOM ACROSS GALAXIES.
7. A COMET WILL PASS BY EARTH, BESTOWING YOU WITH GOOD LUCK AND PROSPERITY. WATCH AS YOUR WILDEST DREAMS BEGIN TO TAKE FLIGHT!
8. YOU’LL BE INVITED TO JOIN AN INTERSTELLAR COUNCIL AS EARTH’S REPRESENTATIVE, PROMOTING PEACE AND COLLABORATION AMONG THE STARS.
9. YOU’LL HARNESS THE ENERGY OF A STAR, REVOLUTIONIZING TECHNOLOGY ON EARTH AND USHERING IN A GOLDEN AGE OF INNOVATION.
10. YOU’LL DISCOVER A NEW ELEMENT IN THE ASTEROID BELT, NAMED AFTER YOU, BRINGING FAME AND ADVANCING SCIENCE!
