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from inside
The Infinite
Spectacle
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Volume One |
| Makin' Love
to That Electric Eel |
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Cruelty! Yes. I
have increased its charge in
increments. After a while, I need to
increase it more. Then more. Now, I am
frightened. If I approach, a blue
electric flame encloses the bot’s
alluring ever young body. I have aged
quickly. Balding. Always working to
refine or waiting to be excited, I have
grown fat. |
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A cold sweat broke
out on her scalp and heat blossomed on
the back of her head. This was fear and
it was unlike anything she'd felt since
she was five years old and her mother
accidentally left the closet door open
half an inch, or that time when she was
eight and she swore she saw purple
tentacles thrashing around under her
bed. |
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They warned us
that the thing could fuck with our heads
could fuck with our heads, but no one
really took it seriously. ‘Temporal
breakdown,’ they said. ‘Tricks with
space and time,’ they said. The Bucket
appeared suddenly eight months ago, on
the far side of Mars, and no one on
Earth had had an uninterrupted night of
sleep since, their minds pulled in one
direction then another, dream whiplash.
Something had to be done had to be done. |
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He came over for a
closer look. It looked like there was
some pattern formed in the mud next to
the door. Around it he saw deep
impressions, the same that he notices in
the forest where the flower grew. It
almost looked like someone or something
wrote letters in the ground. |
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The wind blew
heavily outside her bedroom window, and
Katarina could hear the trees swaying
back and forth, it was oddly comforting.
She could feel her hair blowing in the
breeze, while the familiar scent of
lavender lingered in her nostrils.
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Diep sat on a
stiff, plastic chair next to the bed in
his and Charlene’s room, naked except
for his wedding ring. Beside him stood
the only other furniture in their cube,
a mirrored dresser made of worthless
ebony wood, an early symbol of the kind
of waste that had brought Humanity to
the abyss. |
| Shoot, I
didn't even finalize my body-form until
we were pretty close, to make sure it
fit your psychology. Exotic, not close
enough to look like an unsettling
distortion of humanity, but not, y'know,
too alien. General design came from a
committee back home, but all the
refinements, like displaying words and
images on my big ol' glowing tummy—my
idea. |
| The visor
de-shading program kicked in, and his
helmet-shield began its gradual change
from pitch black to gray. It would take
a few moments more before it reached its
final bluish tint. Through his helmet’s
changing hue, Wren watched large swathes
of reds and oranges slowly materialize
as the sky; the patchwork of heat
intermingled with the sheets of dark,
basaltic plains in front of him. |
| I’m not
zapped and tagged by a security drone on
the way out so I can only assume that
the store’s auto-scan unit detected
enough credits in my pathetic account to
pay for the fresh pair of tube socks
I’ve just made off with. I sit myself
down on the warm concrete of the
sidewalk and again reach for my boot
buckles with that anxious longing that
addicts must feel when they prep their
needles with whatever it is they cherish
most. But in my case it’s just socks. |
| When she
was done she climbed out of the shower
and dried. Fred had told her not to take
her ship suit off, and it seemed to be
drying by itself. She shook her hair and
started back towards the control room.
She went in and sat on the grass, as she
looked around she noticed the room was
starting to bloom. There were flowers
popping out of everything. Walls were
covered with violets. The floor had
daises and tulips. Fred had roses all
around him. |
|
The best
suggestion seemed to be to take it
off-planet to some colony that could use
it to compete with The Department Store.
How long to get to anywhere where the
colonists could pay a fair price for the
product? One, two, and three shook
heads. Years to get there, years back. |
|
Neither smelled of security and
Angel reasoned that if they were
competition then they would have sussed-him-out
long ago and left, knowing he the
better-equipped, more dangerous player.
So, given this egotistical spasm of
logic, just who the hell were these two
he had seen constantly among the press
these past two weeks? And what’s more,
would they get in the way when Angel
made his move today? |
|
And now, while time doesn’t exactly
stand still, it progresses very slowly,
but only for me. How slowly?
At this point it seems
to be stuck at one minute per hour. I
know this because after what I can only
imagine as two or maybe three years, I
devised a way—a machine—that allows me
to track the time passage in this prison
of my parallel reality. As with every
other object in my new world, in order
for it to maintain normal speed and
velocity, the time-keeping device must
remain in contact with my physical body
to keep its pace. |
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The Infinite
Spectacle
Volume One
A mind-bending, time-traveling,
gut-busting collection of short stories
that takes you to the edge of space and
deposits you just below the skin. 12
writers of Sci-Fi, Speculative and
Unusual tales, brought together to twist
your thoughts and displace your known
reality.
We've spent several months collecting
and compiling submissions from all over
the United States to present a 200+ page
volume of varied intensity, emotion, and
style that we hope that you'll enjoy as
much as we do.
ISBN 13: 978-0-9964147-0-8
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