Genres: Apocalyptic, Queer, Romance, Space, War
SECURE PRIORITY COMMUNIQUE
distribution SOLITAIRE, keyword MASQUERADE, source PENTACLE
FROM: TRIPLE INTENT
TO: ASPHODEL
BEGIN CONTENT
Even if you’re my enemy, I’m glad to hear from you. (Continue Reading…)
Joey Straphos, Papa Joe, told me once that Chandra’s Game is a bitch of a city, fickle but generous when the mood strikes her. But Papa Joe was a romantic.
Chandra’s Game roots in the side of a barren asteroid moon like a tick. Over the years we’ve burrowed deeper into rock and ice until poor Chandra is mostly Game. We loop the twin wormholes, Gehenna and Tartarus, roundabout in a figure eight, ready to catch the freighters as they escape from hell’s dark maw. We strip them of goods and drink their heat, load them up and send them into another hell. It’s a profitable game, Chandra’s.
My mother smuggled me into Chandra’s Game without patronage and compounded her error by dying without permission; I was Terra-born unless she was lying, which was likely enough. I joined the other unregistereds down in the Warrens: ferals that lived off the Mayor’s Dole and by odd-jobs when that wasn’t enough. Papa Joe fed us, and sometimes the tunnels were glorious with the smell of meat, and if you were smart or hungry enough you didn’t ask from what. Where there’s humanity there are rats, and Joey wasn’t a rich man, not then. But food is food, and he’d bunk you if he could, and if all he asked in return for the latest Warren scuttlebutt or a few sticks of ephedrine off a freighter’s load, what of it? Saints are few and far between in Chandra’s Game.
Genres: Technology
As a freelance marine behavioral researcher most of Natalia’s jobs went something like this: She swam around in some large but controllable environment with a cephalopod, paying attention to its body language and her own. She tried to make the octopus or squid feel as comfortable as possible, so that its behavior in response to stimuli might approximate what it would do in the wild. It wasn’t what she had expected when she trained as a marine biologist, but frankly she preferred it to dissection, experimentation by electric shock, or even anything that required interacting with animals captive in tiny tanks.
This particular job started out only slightly unusual. For most jobs she was given a specific research interest. Sometimes they told her exactly what to do to elicit the behaviors they wanted to study, and sometimes they let her design the approach, but either way it meant some narrow focus for her attention. Natalia always tried to give the cephalopod some play time around their interactions – if challenged on this, she told her employers that it led to more natural responses than repeating the same cues over and over again – but their time was very much directed by research.
On this job, they told her just to play with the octopus. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Medical, Queer, Romance, Technology
Feb. 17, 3:40 AM. Audio notebook for new project: revival of a clinically dead patient, 36 year old male, died of hypothermia and shock.
The technician at the morgue hesitated when releasing him to me. I’m not surprised, with the tone that took hold of my voice as I corrected her Mr. to Dr. as she took down my details. When I gave her my name, her pen stalled over the paper—a giveaway that his parents had called before I arrived. I should be grateful that she released him to me anyway, honoring my legal right to the body. I should be grateful for so much, I suppose, even if it doesn’t feel like it, to have this opportunity to—to not let his story end in tragedy. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Queer, Romance, Space, Technology, YA
“Hey Marty,” Mom asks, “got a moment?”
I cringe whenever Mom’s voice has that tone to it. I don’t know what she’s going to say; but if I’ve learned anything in my thirteen years on this desolate, oxygen-deprived rock, it’s that she’s going to find a way to say the most mortifying thing possible. It would be impressive, the way that every sentence excavates my stomach—if it weren’t my stomach she was mining!
Okay, that’s unfair. Maybe this time it won’t be so bad?
“That girl who just walked past us. Why didn’t you ask her out?”
Or not. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Humor, Technology
“This place is trash, garbágio, blechalicious,” Rocky Cornelius said appreciatively. “All we gotta do is, as they say, sublevel the vibe.”
“Really? You think so?” The greengrocer, Franklyn, wrung his hands—still caked with black soil from showing her the beet rows in aisle five—a sure sign that Rocky’s negging, one of the most reliable techniques in her consultant toolbox, was working.
They stood in the canned goods section of Primal, soon to be Westwood’s newest and hippest boutique bodega slash survival goods retailer. The paper labels on the tins had been artfully patinated by some design school dropout, ripped and torn to leave just a slash of Roma tomato picture here, a glimpse of fava bean logo there. The shelves looked half-caved in, but were in fact quite secure, welded into place at zig-zag angles. Simulated California sun streamed, dappled, through an ivy-frosted, hole-in-the-roof-shaped skylight.
The idea of this ‘concept shoppe’ was to make shoppers feel like they were looting an abandoned store in a post-apocalyptic, collapseporn paradise. Rocky quite liked the idea. No one wanted to be a “consumer” these days. People—especially Californians, who had lately been through so much—wanted to think of themselves as “survivors,” disaster-hardened protagonists in a return-to-their-roots story of rebuilding and social rejuvenation. It’s just that, if they could afford one of the new quake-proof condos springing up in Westwood, they wanted to do so without having to worry about tetanus, botulism, scurvy, or gluten. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Technology
Felix ruffled his red tail feathers in irritation. Of all the birds to get quarantined with, why a flamingo? Flamingos were idiots! And they stank, too. The Candice Lisle Avian Quarantine Center was supposedly the pride of Lincoln Park Zoo, but to Felix it was nothing more than a musty cement room lined with cages. Only the two largest were occupied.
Felix glared across the room at Mateo who stood in his own cage–on one leg–with the satisfied calm of domestication. Felix would never accept captivity. He itched with the need to soar, to hunt with his mate!
The gaping void in his belly gurgled. Four days since the humans disappeared. He was hungry!
Felix activated his neural link and tried explaining their situation. Again.
<Look, you dumb flamingo. The humans–>
<It’s Mateo, please!> The flamingo’s chip-transmission registered as a rich baritone with a pretentious accent. <Honor my Chilean heritage. Just because you’re a wild raptor–>
<Red-tailed hawk!>
<–your lack of culturio gives you no right to demean the ancient heritage of the magnifica Chilean Flamingo!>
<Get over yourself. I’ve heard real Spanish, and yours sucks. You were bred in captivity and hatched right here in Chicago. You’ve never tasted free skies.> A deep longing for home, for freedom, nearly overwhelmed Felix. He snapped his beak, chirped irritably, and started again.
<Mateo, the humans aren’t coming back.>
Genres: Technology, War
This episode is sponsored by The Theater of the Midnight Sun (TOTMS) podcast, an anthology series of sci-fi/fantasy audio dramas. It’s a bubbly cocktail of fantasy, mystery, and sci-fi adventure, with a splash of comedy. And it’s all ad-free.
Praise from Listeners:
“Great (5 stars). Awesome show.”
– Shadarko
“The first season of TOTMS is beyond brilliant. Fabulously well done.”
– Zeus Legion
“Excellent series (5 stars). The disclaimer is that the performers have never acted before. Don’t believe it! These are original entertaining stories with professional production values.”
– DigitalBeat
“Some of the best quality audio fiction I have ever encountered. High praise particularly for ‘Uniform’ and ‘Bluebirds and Dead Canaries.’”
– rsnider
“Very Entertaining! (5 stars) The stories blend a superb mix of fantasy with old-time radio mystery.”
– waitwhat?
You can find Theater of the Midnight Sun on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other podcast directories.
(…Continued from Part 1)
Carl scrambled to follow Mango past the loading dock to the parking corral. Her T was an early model with a lot of light-years on it, but its shell still shone and its maxillae were well-filed.
He stepped gingerly up onto one forelimb and squeezed between Mango and a delivery box.
“So,” she asked over her shoulder, “why do you need to get to the Core bad enough to spend a couple days’ pay on the trip?”
He snorted. “Try a week. I work for the government.”
Her eyes widened.
“No, it’s cool, I like my job. Second Assistant Director for Core Planning and Development.”
She didn’t respond, a familiar reaction when he talked about his job. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Technology, War
Carleton T. Lowengren, low-level civil servant, single twenty-something and refugee from the war-torn Outer Rim, woke to the remnants of a gaming binge and a killer headache courtesy of his interface. The implant had been trying to wake him for some time.
He rolled off the couch. Another day, another commute from his nondescript apartment to the center of the Galaxy, trying to do the one thing his mother said he never would: make a difference.
The walk-in wardrobe straightened his collar as he registered the time. Carl sprinted past the pre-programmed bowl of cereal to the garage door.
“Leo? Where are you, boy?”
Carl’s ride was usually parked in the garage on a mat of sweet-grass and clover. It was nowhere to be seen. And it’s not like he could overlook a car-sized dimension-hopping tortoise. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Computer, Technology
The gear is too expensive.
Honestly. There isn’t enough competition in the market. The Immersion® console alone costs an arm and a leg. Ọmọ. You’ll sweat to even get a Nigerian-used console on Jiji or at Computer Village for less than 200k. And that’s just the console. We’re not even talking about the vests or the mats.
Or the chair!
For real though. How else does somebody experience the saddle—on dragon-back—if they can’t experience the full flex of the dragon’s powerful muscles under their thighs? I’ve seen the streams of American pro dragon-racers in full Immersion® gear—visor, suit, chair! The rich kids here are enjoying, on God! (Continue Reading…)