Another Fine Mess

Revenge is a dish best served cold. How very apt, thought Imperial Ambassador Ennodius as he watched his diplomatic rival, Harrington, finish the gazpacho soup across the banquet table. Last year's humiliation would be repaid at last.

He had gauged the dose of the medical-grade laxative perfectly, mused Ennodius - for as Harrington stood to deliver his inter-course speech, a look of consternation crossed the man's face. The results promised to be . . . explosive.

Ennodius regarded the brash sepia decor, and sat back with a beatific smile. The chamber's unofficial designation of 'the Brown Room' was about to go down in infamy.

Covenant

Angelina massaged her aching eyes with trembling hands as she considered the lab reports again. She couldn't sleep, anyway. Over a third of the colony was infected, and still the virus, codenamed Isaac, defied their quarantine efforts. Vector unknown; almost 100% mortality.

Just one had survived - a child. So, the only vaccine Angelina could make had to come from him. But to have any chance of saving the remaining thousands, she would need all of his blood.

Angelina's tears fell freely on to the small, sleeping form that stirred before her.

"Hush, my son," she whispered. "Everything will be alright."

Trouble on the Horizon

The tortured hull shrieked as their opponent's laser drilled it again.

"Where are those calculations?" shouted Alderson.

Miller's hands shook as he tried feverishly to determine the correct destination coordinates. With the navcomputer a smoking wreck, his mathematical abilities were the crew's only hope.

"Problem solved!" he cried, entering the numbers.

The hyperspace tunnel that wrapped the ship in its safe cocoon had never looked so glorious - but joy turned to dismay upon exiting. They stared, disbelieving, at the nightmare maw of a black hole.

A death sentence.

Alderson peered at Miller's scribblings. "Is that a plus or a minus?"

Extroversion

"There’s nothing but earth below," they say, but I'll see for myself. That’s why I'm still descending through the endless tunnels I'd discovered earlier, trembling with fatigue.

The torch's firelight illuminates dirty but otherwise smooth metal walls - they’re obviously from pre-Catastrophe times. In this claustrophobic darkness I long to see the surface again, curving up and around into blue-white haze; a giant bowl around the sun.

The shaft ends in a window beneath my feet. It reveals a pure black speckled with thousands of brilliant points of light. A huge cave, surely? I decide to break through the glass.

Onwards!

The Room

The closed door looked innocuous enough, but Wouters knew the truth. Young Lambert had been in there for two days, and it had been unusually quiet for most of that time. Everyone came out changed.

Everyone.

It was interesting, he thought, how just one experience could so profoundly alter the core of someone's self-identity. Many had been broken entirely in that room.

The door opened and Lambert emerged. Unsteady, ashen, the eyes different now, but - walking. Perhaps he'd been more resilient than Wouters had given him credit for.

"Congratulations!" exclaimed Wouters. "You've completed the EU Administration and Bureaucracy Exam!"

Orchestra

"They sing, you see."

Dana gestured at the immense spectacle before them.

"Every star vibrates with a primary frequency - a musical note - with natural harmonics superimposed. And each is different."

"I . . ." whispered Jared.

"To have gathered so many suns, to have arranged them perfectly . . ." Dana sighed. "I wish we knew who they were."

The music filled Jared utterly; a sanctuary for his soul. He stood now in timeless peace, one of a billion enraptured faces held in thrall. Dana would tend to his living needs - and those of the others in her care.

But, sometimes, she wished she could hear.

Exit Strategy

Shooting me is - at the very least - impolite of him. I can understand why he is doing it, though. Some guards are very protective of their banks.

“Have a nice day!” I bid him cheerfully, as I Select the closest probability-line in which he’ll miss (a beautiful sepia colour, like nostalgia). The bullet drills harmlessly into the wall as I stride out the doors. Straight into her.

“Going somewhere, darling?” she asks, with that infuriating smile.

The p-lines converge into a single strand as she Blocks my options; someone racks a gun to my left. Cassandra has caught me.

Again.

Choices

Every time I manage to pull back from the edge, I leave a small part of me inescapably there. That is the cost of it; the admission paid for each visit. I can keep doing this, I know, for some time yet - but there will come a point where more of me remains than returns.

And yet - it’s such a small loss. Like the barest scrape rubbing off an atomic layer. No one will notice; I can barely feel it myself. So what price is it really, in the end?

*      *      *

The boy watches sadly as the hollow man drifts past.

The Light of Other Days

Jace really missed the blue skies of home. She’d thought she’d never tire of the sight of the void dotted with a million tiny jewels of distant suns, but the monochromatic lightyears had taken their toll.

She gazed through her spacecraft’s shattered hull at the purple-azure dawn. Sunlight glinted on shards of exposed bone, and the cold air numbed her tattered flesh. The toxic atmosphere and her injuries raced to be the first to claim her.

Jace’s final sigh wavered between pain and contentment. The sky’s hues didn’t quite look like those of her childhood, but they were good enough.

Golden Rule

Drexel studied the tiny form intently. Creepy-crawlies had fascinated and repelled him in equal measure since childhood, and the years had not diminished these feelings.

With a deft movement of his tweezers, he plucked another limb off. Just two left! He loved this gradual imposition of stillness on the frantically wriggling chaos held between his fingers. The exercise of power, however petty, felt good.

A horribly loud clicking noise made him look up. Two huge, bristling...Insectoids...confronted him, clearly agitated. They moved fast, binding him tight.

Even before the aliens’ mandibles closed around his legs, Drexel began to scream.

Homo Machinus

Grabbing sticks and stones, they set about the prisoner with acceptable savagery. After a while they paused, puzzled by the strange noise bubbling from the bloodied form before them.

The round metal room echoed with the organic sound. Contained within layered concentric shells, cogs within cogs, the wheels of law turned. Justice as a concept long forgotten, this was purely a legal machine now for systematically enacting that particular inhumanity. Each a part of the process and its execution; not accountable.

And still the laughter came through shattered lungs.

"Your Honour," monotoned a guard. "You remain in contempt of court."

Whodunnit?

Only five of us made it to the escape pod. We peered through the viewports at the cataclysmic destruction of our spacecraft as we spun away into the Deep Black. It had been a deliberate, traitorous act - some mole undetected amongst the crew - and we knew that the saboteur had to be on board. We exchanged suspicious glances.

I studied the others closely. The second technician was looking particularly nervous - fidgeting and sweat-soaked. The navigator didn't meet anyone’s eyes for long.

I sat back, thinking hard. Which one of them would be the first to guess it had been me?