Sci Fi
The Man and The Automaton
The Man and The Automaton It’s early morning, after breakfast, and a cavalcade of news is rushing down to our unit. Our boys across the border are struggling, they don’t have a consistent supply of rations, ammunition, meds or any combination of the three to keep soldiers afloat. Before I make my way out of the mess hall I take note of a locket, my locket. Its warmth and affectionate shape, a cartoonish heart, provides comfort as a striking contrast to the weight I feel while holding it, an unyielding mass almost buckling my knees when pondering about its burden. I proceed through the strain and move outside. After receiving that fantastic piece of info letting me know I’ll be deploying three days earlier than expected, I see lots of people, soldiers like myself. Some I recognize, K-jay's defining features, unkempt facial hair and rust covered prosthetic makes it easy to pick him out of a crowd, but there are lots of people here who I’ve never seen before. Now, “never seen” doesn't mean they’re strangers, I know all of them, or at least the majority, it's a pretty tightly packed unit. They just look different, I don’t know how but it's something with the eyes, how they twitch at a moment's notice, switching up and down, across every axis. It's the strangest phenomena, it's like a phase or a transformation that occurs for the older sergeants. It's almost robotic in the way they navigate the barracks, not willing to make eye contact with anything other than their current objective. In an effort to get out of people watching I decided to make my way to Robotics to get acquainted with our new guests.
By SwivelSkittle5 years ago in Fiction
Ad Astra
Ad Astra. That was what inscribed on the heart shaped locket he held. Many years ago he had found it in one of all to many abandoned houses that now inhabited the world. His mother had given it to him before her passing, and her mother had given it to her. It would have gone to one of his two sisters presumably if they were around at the time of her passing, but as with so many children, they did not survive childhood.
By Chandler Dicken5 years ago in Fiction
The Young Man
THE YOUNG MAN By Patrick Seaman The Young Man eyed the field nervously. Standing in the tree line, just inside the covering brush, he was invisible, he hoped, to any prying eyes along the opposing field. He scanned up and down, looking for any movement that could be a threat. It was quiet. That was normal, given the lack of birds and other wildlife. The wind blew through the trees above him. His father had told him about birds, how they once flew constantly through the air, perched in trees, and sang their cheerful songs. They were all gone now. He had told him stories of the woodland mammals; squirrels climbing up and down trees, foraging for nuts to store for the winter. Chipmunks running about through the leaves on the ground. And the deer, majestic, trotting silently through the forest-the bucks with their beautiful antlers, and the does with their little spotted fawns. The Young Man looked forward to a day that he could see them for real-not just pictures in an old tattered book, or videos on the computer. He wondered what they would smell like. Snapping out of his thoughts, he refocused on the task at hand. It had taken him months of travel to get to this point, and he didn’t want to fail now. The Raiders could be hiding anywhere. Ambush was their specialty. Cannibals who killed and ate unwary travelers between the domed cities. The Young Man wondered what meat tasted like. Even human. He had never had any meat at all; he and his clan, like everyone else, subsisted on plants-fruits, vegetables, nuts & seeds. After the Shift, as his parents called it, there were no more animals to eat. And very few humans to eat them, as well. He was an Outsider-part of the small percentage of humans left who didn’t live in a domed city, protected from the Raiders, and other outsiders.
By Patrick Seaman5 years ago in Fiction
Eric's Journey
I remember walking onto the Morningstar from the HermesLift and already feeling a sense of relief. I hadn’t been away from home in so long and while I was happy there for the most part, it was starting to feel like a prison. This Morningstar voyage got my blood boiling again! I was anticipating all kinds of new trouble that I could get into. Also, I didn’t have my mother over my shoulder always wanting to know what I was doing and where I had been. I did miss her though…
By Steven Allen5 years ago in Fiction
Legacy of Ash
Home was no longer home. It was a base, a shelter, a hideout, a safe haven. Still, a part of Tobias Denhart considered it home, even if it was half-buried in black volcanic sand and collapsed on the beach. The pillows with tropical floral designs, though dirty, were still sitting on the wicker chairs in the living room. The kitchen cabinets still had Tobias’s “Boss of the Year” mugs from his business back on Earth before he moved to the colony. Cracked pictures of his brother and his children were lying flat on the dusty coffee table.
By Catherine Kruger5 years ago in Fiction
Homegrown
That day had been inevitable. I always had a feeling that it would come to me. We'd been brought up to find the whole thing noble; lessons and scriptures throughout our time at school had made it very clear how much of an honour it was to be one of the Bearers. My older sisters loved the idea. I think the tragic romanticism of it all was attractive to them at first; being able to tell people they held such a hard-hitting and burdenous responsibility seemed to make it all worthwhile, despite the drawbacks. I'd never felt the same way, not even as a child.
By Argumentative Penguin5 years ago in Fiction
Planet Cannon
Planet Cannon by Kimberly R. Young Illustration by Tori Cannon The date was March 13th , 2221. It was written across the harsh magenta sky, blinking every few seconds. The signal from The Towers must’ve been dampened by the crystal storm that had just rolled in and just as easily out, both violent and fleeting. Unexpected and then just- gone. Time was 19:42.
By Kimberly Young5 years ago in Fiction
