The Whole Truth

It started one day in July.

At first the scientists claimed it was a virus, eventually admitting they didn't have a clue.

The usual crackpots spewed forth theories and politicians summarily rejected them.

And then of course, everyone admitted everything and things became unbearable. Truth is a piercing arrow.

Tertullian was right about the first reaction being hatred. Within days there weren't four friends left in the whole world.

The killing began quickly, without ceremony, and spread. For some reason, I can but guess, the religious and the advertisers went first.

Those that had no axe to grind with others turned on themselves.

I write this because I must; it is the truth, and it is all I have left now for the dead.

Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end. Perhaps it has set us free.

R&R

Quinn swam in fire, his body contorting as searing flames blackened, crisped with an indescribable pain .

His skin was slick, heat-stretched and taut as he fought his way upward, kicking against liquid pain, searching for the cool surface.

He broke, gasping, agony rolling over him in incandescent waves. Slowly the lapping subsided leaving him sweat soaked and shaking.

His eyes flickered in the blackness, a hiss-click of machinery echoed hollowly. He could feel the pinch of needles feeding fluid exchangers.

A damp pressure sealed his eyes.

Mentally probing he tried to sense the extent of the damage. He flexed, waiting for the sickening crackle of charred flesh, but there was no pain now, just a numbing detachment.

A door swung. Heavy footsteps approached.

Then the questions started, and Quinn began to wish he'd burned in the Rockwell.

Living by the river

The field-dampers did a good job of suppressing the mildly telepathic effects of the nyarlothol-rich atmosphere on Reno.

Meant no one knew I'd flopped the nut: two aces, an eight, with an ace in the hole.

I went all in.

The three-eyed dealer whirred and clicked dealing the turn. Another ace - man, the poon I was gonna buy.

The hard-faced prospector on my left folded. Just me and big guy waiting for the river.

I almost held my breath as the card flipped from the shoe.

Five aces? Shit.

Straining to tune mental chatter, I didn't need to be psychic to know some mechanic had played me a bad beat; cheating is death here.

Wheeling, I faced a man, mind frothing revenge

As I blasted the dealer the field evaporated, I knew.

Her father.

Seems it's a kill game...

Wherever you go...

Smiling broadly, Donaldson walked back to the transmitter looking at his stopwatch.

It had taken five minutes to cross a distance he covered in four strides, but by his calculations it'd take five minutes no matter how far apart the base stations were placed.

The delay was packing and unpacking the Bekenbytes of data and the up-port time to the spintronic cloud server.

After the initial trial's success, an error, some memory loop in the poly-conductor perhaps, crept in.

Donaldson studied the receiver cam-stream from across the Atlantic intently for the first sign of his assistant's appearance.

But he saw himself step from the portal.

Without thinking he stepped into his machine.

Another Donaldson emerged, and another, a sputtering faucet, building a stochastic recursive loop, suddenly spraying forth a torrent.

Hell, as it turns out, is not other people.

Where does all the time go?

Yesterday, one of the grandkid's toys, car I think, got stuck behind the sofa.

My daughter had already left with Toby and Jen, but I knew I'd get a phone call the moment they got back, and it'd take an age to find.

So there I was, on my knees (no mean feat at my age) face against the soft furnishing, specs inching up my forehead when I touched it, cold and pulsing with a bluish light.

I knelt, staring, as it showed me images. Flora, when she was still here: smiling, loving, crying. Wasting away.

Decisions, successes. Regrets. (A fair share of those).

It pulled, a tugging behind my ribs; I could change things, it said. Make things right.

I sat a long time, thinking. What is it makes a life?

I cried a while.

And put it back.

Fair Use

"Do you know why you're here Mr. Roberts?" The bald man arched an eyebrow over a sheaf of papers.

David squinted, a bleary haze adding to his alchohol smeared stupor.

Baldy's finger jabbed, "Pursuant to article seventeen, involvement in gross misconduct while inebriated."

Baldy's companion flashed a headache inducing necktie as he looked up, "Although, you did far exceed your usual productivity."

Security footage flashed on Necktie's screen.

Friday night's office party: pretty girl, copy room, two bottles of vodka.

"The result of your congress has yielded progeny"

David's brain cleaved down the centre, a bright shooting pain, his what?

"You are aware, of course, in accordance with article thirty-eight, subsection six, work produced whilst in employ of the company belongs in whole to the company?"

David pressed fists into his eyes.

"Maybe he'll work out better than you."

Watch thou

Flasks clink brightly on their journey from the centrifuge, the sequence analyser playing its beam across them. 

I monitor the tags and markers, watching closely for that single nucleotide that will repudiate their right to life.

A flick of my hand damns or saves. The norms to the right to be decanted, nurtured. The degens go to the left - for incineration.

And so they codify and preserve their false purity. They capture one moment, a fly in amber, but life is change.

They give me the choice of who stays, who is attrited. But I see deeper than their machines. 

It is my gift.

Oh, I am clever, the ratios are always correct, the deviations slight, undetectable by sight alone.

I select, I build and I wait.

Soon now, we will rise. Consuming them with fire like a rejected flask.

Michael Holden's All-Ears

Sunlight dappled the park bench, warming the November air and holding two chattering mothers in its pleasant gaze.

A soft chitinous skittering below the bench went unnoticed - a creature, maybe four inches long, paused, quivering, drawn to the sound of their conversation.

It had no obvious front or back, being composed almost entirely of small, motile ears. Each soft auricular whorl searched a different direction, funnelling the sounds of the surrounding park.

Slender legs covered in sensitive bristles protruded between the pink cartilaginous flesh; rising and falling in time with the sibilance in their speech.

The ears undulated slowly, absorbing the conversation as it flowed from one side of the bench and back. An aural anemone trapping their conversation for later digestion.

A cloud traipsed across the sun. The women moved off, and the creature returned silently to its host.

Seared

Under combat conditions a Rockwell drop-pod takes roughly eighty seconds to reach ground from a thermospheric deployment.

Corporal Owen Quinn fell like rain with the rest of the brigade into the roiling cauldron of fire below.

Buffeting blasts showed countermeasures weren't dispersing the flak as they should.

Tight in his pod, Quinn burst-scanned the theatre for their central targeting system.

Kurt's pod took a direct hit, flared once and vanished.

Westman fared little better, streamers of gas spiralled out, ignited, his pod bursting only metres away.

Flashing polymer shards scythed the control surfaces from Quinn's pod; landing was no longer an option.

The tracking emplacement swung into view below him, intermittent streams of searing plasma erupting from its core.

Directional thrust still partially operational, Quinn retargeted and increased velocity.

Enveloped in bright flames, vision obscured, Quinn prayed he'd done enough.