Sci-Fi in Six

Science fiction short stories told in six paragraphs or less. Any submitted art will have a story written around it.

[scifiinsix]

An automaton’s leg joints creak and whine as it inches through the snow towards a partially-lit house. It turns its body almost inquisitively. It’s curious. The residents inside ignore it. People here have learned which robots are the dangerous ones. -- IMAGE: Simon Stalenhag

[scifiinsix]

Salvage

She stepped wearily through the airlock and slammed the wall switch. The immense door swung shut behind her, the rapid change in air pressure letting her know that it had sealed itself, sucking the contaminated air from the tiny chamber as it did so. The UV lights flared on around her and her helmet’s filter automatically darkened. The familiar patter of the chemical shower beat down against her visor. After a few minutes, the yellow indicator light on the wall blinked a calming green, letting her know that she was cleared of contaminants. She felt the rush of the air press against her suit as the room re-pressurized itself.   She unlatched her helmet with a tiny hiss, relieved to be free of the stale recycled air of her suit. The bunker’s air was recycled too, she knew, but somehow it felt less stifling. Funny how that feeling never got old, she thought, no matter how many times she’d been in and out of that stupid suit. And how many times had it been? She glanced at the date indicator on her arm and realized, with a start, that she knew exactly how many times. In the antechamber beyond the airlock, she released the airtight seals at her wrists and ankles and stepped carefully out of the suit, placing it gently back in its storage chamber. She took the handle of the heavy wheeled chest that contained today’s salvage and started towards her lab. Normally she’d turn on some music while she worked to stave off the unending silence of the bunker, vintage audio files that she’d pulled from previous salvages. 1980’s pop rock was her favorite, Bowie and Journey and Depeche Mode. But not today. She punched up a file on her viewscreen, and the monitor filled with the image of a handsome young man in a lab coat. “Hi baby,” he said with a grin, clear blue eyes sparkling despite the pixelated image. “Sorry, I think I have a bad connection-but you won’t believe it, babe. I figured it out. I found the answer. I can’t believe we’ve been missing it this whole time, when it was right in front of us. I spoke with the council, and they’re flying me out in about six hours to meet with the President. This could all be over by tomorrow.” He continued to explain the details of his findings, and she smiled in spite of herself as she watched him gesturing excitedly, only pausing momentarily to sweep his long hair back out of his eyes. He went on for several minutes, until the transmission image began to crackle and waver, finally freezing on his childlike half-smile, the last image she would ever see of him. The date stamp read one year ago today.

[scifiinsix]

Small

The explosions boom through the valley as we scatter into our homes. Grains tumble from their perches. We'll have to put them back after it leaves.

A large shadow proceeds each rumble like an eclipse of the Sun. Grass bends and crunches for miles around. Whole lines of us vanish when the foot falls. We'll have to move the bodies after it leaves.

Underground the shaking is unbearable. Sisters scramble around holding their children in their jaws. Some protect the queen but most just follow their signals and try to keep busy, ignore the destruction.

We've always heard stories from the soldiers that return. That they were taken up, seemingly miles above the ground, after latching onto the monster. They watched friends stomped and smashed and burned with brilliant beams of sunlight. Our weapons are ineffective against the giant; this we know. Other stories are harder to believe.

One soldier said she was lifted into the sky until she was up against a giant blinking eye. It was a hundred times her size. She was returned unharmed, as if being examined. It was hard to take her seriously while clearing the dead.

The queen doesn't know when the monster will come or what its intentions are. I'll have to rebuild our home again after it leaves.

[scifiinsix]

Purge

"Objects are more than physical, you know? They take up mental space too." He stopped to wipe his eyes. "Tania was more than physical to me. Even when she's gone I close our bedroom door lightly as if she sleeps..." "I walk down the sidewalk with room for two." A technician nodded slightly, and placed the device, cold and metallic, across his reddened forehead. "You can't live your whole life with an empty room in your head, you know? Do it."

[scifiinsix]

Citizen Safe

Two assailants, one armed, the other injured, cornering a woman on the corner of 15th and Lerin. Respond. "Copy that, control," an officer tapping her flashlight on the dashboard of her hover answered. "Control, what is the status of the victim?" "Woman has elevated heart rate, bleeding from right eye. Cortisol levels in the extreme range." "Copy that," the officer responded. From the recorder footage she could see the woman cowering before a large man in a brown jacket. He had a hand at the collar of her blouse. Another man was clutching his leg just above his knee on the ground next to her. There was a pen sticking out if it. "Control, I think the female citizen has this covered," the officer concluded. "Send in a drone."   From underneath a recorder nearest the corner, a small hover emerged. Flitting around like a fly until it was above the remaining man assaulting the citizen, it emitted a recorded tone. The man raised a middle finger to the small craft. A directed sound pulse ruptured one of his eardrums and he crumpled. Citizen safe.

Image Credit: Cyber-noir by alexiuss on deviantART

[scifiinsix]

Dearest

Dear Sara... To the lovely Sara... Hey Sara!... Each opening to his message was recorded, and he quickly deleted all of them with another command. "Why it is impossible to tell a girl that you love her!" he demanded to no one in particular. He paused to look at the display in front of him. He continued confidently. Why is it impossible to tell you that I love you...I guess it's not so hard...

[scifiinsix]

Testing She closed the door behind her with a dull thud. She could feel the higher air pressure in her ear drums. The familiar sound of the compressor was hidden behind the pounding of electronic rhythms in the outpost. She stood there in the dark. With eyes closed she could have made it to her station, but too many stubbed toes kept her still. She tapped her foot to the monotonous beat in her ears. Dirty blue light slowly filled the room soon after the compressor stopped whirling. Aquariums full of little creatures lined the back wall and darted away in response to the sounds. She half walked, half danced towards them. "Scared little guys," she said to herself. "C'mon, it's dinner time." At the sight of the metallic cylinder where she kept their food, a few of the silvery red fish floated towards the aquarium surface. As they came to eat, she had a scoop ready for one of them. As she laid out the small fish on the tray at her station, it convulsed violently. By the time she had her gloves on, it was motionless. She filled her syringe, injected the specimen, and moved it to a new tank. As its body hit the water, it added a small blue light to the others.

Image Credit: Alinias interior by unfor54k3n on deviantART

[scifiinsix]

Killers

I use everything I know to help me kill. I daydream about toxic chemicals and disruptive proteins. I fantasize about shredded DNA and engineered viruses. My job is theoretical, but I hear reports of how my fantasies work. The more detail the better. I don't fight battles, I don't win "wars", I don't conquer people. My division is a death squad for a foe that doesn't even know we are trying to kill it: bacteria. You have more bacterial cells in you than human cells--most bacteria are harmless to us or even our friends. The ones that kill us are getting better at it. When you push an enemy, an equal adversary, they resist and push back. They adapt. Our first push was penicillin. Now the bacterial populations that it devastated are resisting it. We fire bows and arrows at evolved armor. Resistant bacteria spread among the sick, mutate and evolve in hospitals where immune systems are weak. It's like they know where to strike. But we did this to ourselves. We are the selective pressure, and natural selection proves, as it always has, to be queerer than we can imagine. I scheme and plan and experiment and revise. I think I am making progress until another resistant bacteria emerges, then I daydream of death again. I fight an evolutionary arms race with an organism without arms, and it is winning.

[scifiinsix]

Questions

"Look up, there are no heavens. There is just, only, boundless emptiness. embrace eternity." The child shifted restlessly in his seat as the recorded message droned on. "You are here for a reason. You are here to advance us across the cosmos. Your purpose in life is to die for this cause. Your questions have answers." Another child, a female, shot a glance the other child's way, she smiled. Appearing on his wrist display was a crude drawing of the monitor in front of them. It was positioned in a craft that normally took colonizers off-world. The tape told them that too. Off-world, he thought, there has to be something other than eternity. Maybe out there he could ask his own questions, or ask her some. The child closed his eyes in thought as the female child giggled at her own mischief. In response to the disturbance an orange light on her desk flashed, and she fell immediately silent.

[scifiinsix]

No Answer

Sharp static crackled through the transmitter. Either everyone on the other end was dead or some hand was fiddling clumsily with the settings. But you can't change the settings manually. 

It could be background radiation. This far outside the heliopause, interference from the star is absolutely minimal. The particles from the creation of the universe get picked up as static. Or the other transmitter was destroyed. 

I tried to resolve the signal. I went through the frequencies as slowly as I could. Radio, gamma, infrared. Maybe they left an imprint, a signal, something. 

The officer behind me leaned over my station and offered her condolences. I heard the static, not her: "It's never easy to have a family member in the service," she told me. "You never expect to lose them until you do." 

Something. A flicker of a sound. Was it my mind playing tricks? The result of a tortuous search? Again a sound. I turned around to tell the officer.

She pointed out that the console had been turned off minutes ago.

Image Credit: Lab1 by JulienTruman on deviantART

[scifiinsix]

Passing Through

"You're a neutrino," he said, staring at the ground. He felt her head turn at his voice, eyes on him. He didn't move.

"What do you mean?" she asked. She shifted in her seat. Book spines on the shelf in front of her read Sagan, Herbert, Wells. Anything was better than dealing with this, she thought.

He still examined the floor in front of him. "Neutrinos are lonely. They almost never interact with any other particle." He paused, looked at her shoes then back to the floor. "A neutrino could pass through a light-year of lead without hitting anything," he said.

She clenched her jaw. She knew what she was supposed to do, maybe say she was sorry or explain just what was bothering her. She said nothing.

"You're lonely," he said. "Passing through the world, trying so hard not to touch anything." Again, the floor stole his gaze.

She softened at the words. Crumbled. "But no matter how lonely," she whispered, "something eventually touches them..." Out of the corner, he could see her feet shuffle towards him.

[scifiinsix]

Luck

"Break a leg," she said with a wry smile. "You're going to do great."

"Why do you want me to hurt myself?" the boy asked. She saw that the neurons were firing, just not in the sequence she wanted.

"I meant good luck." She changed her tone to a calm, lecturing one. "Sometimes people say 'break a leg' to one another before a performance, to wish them well."

He stared blankly at her. The binding metal supports running from the base of his skull to his lower back clicked with each turn of his head.

The boy's eyes registered his mother's twitching of lips and wringing of hands. His mind grasped at the wisp of a reply, like he once knew what he should say in a situation like this, but couldn't. He said nothing.

"I mean...now that you can play again...the audience is going to love you." She kissed his forehead. He nodded, understood. Maybe. As he walked from the wings onto the stage, she called the doctor, excited.

[scifiinsix]

Reflection

The door opened to reveal a giant, circular room. Floors black, walls black. In the center there was a pulsing light that illuminated the tiles of the floor. He stepped inside the threshold.

"Chris Arlen." He calmly directed his voice at the floor.

The tiles on the floor flickered until their glow was consistent and growing. In front of him the three-dimensional image of a young man materialized. He was all there, digitally.

As he stared at the hologram of Chris, slowly turning with animated chest movements, he saw that the re-creation hadn't missed a thing. His brown hair slightly too long for his face, the sneakers he should have thrown out, the hole in his neck below the ear that put him here.

He paused a moment, looking at that hole, and suddenly felt the weight of the gun in his holster. Guilt and shame rushed from his finger tips to his temples. It smoldered there. "I'm done in here," he shouted to the attendant outside the room.

"You have another thirty minutes before this reflection period is over, officer," a synthesized voice returned.

[scifiinsix]

Friends

I bring him flowers every day, I hope that he will want to play! He never moves, he's always there. Maybe soon I can...

She paused. The pencil stopped writing in the tiny notebook.

"Do you know a word that rhymes with 'there'?" she asked. She stared smiling at empty eyes.

"Of course!" she chirped. "You always know just what to say." She beamed.

As she wrote, she shuffled in the lap of the composite android, long dead. It had hearts doodled on its legs and arms.

Underneath the chestplate an inscription read: "For Amy."

Image Credit: Solace by Elentori on deviantART

[scifiinsix]

Freeze

A door opened behind her. She brought the covers from her bed up to her chest but did not turn from the window.

"How are you feeling?" asked a tall woman in a Fleet uniform. She could see the blank stare of the girl's eyes in the window's reflection.

"I know what you've been through...it's not easy to be woken up from that. You can't blame the workers. They thought you were..."

"I am" the girl said bluntly. "I was...They should have finished the job--let me do it."

"We don't just freeze people without a reason" the tall officer reminded. "Cryogenics are reserved for people with life-threatening conditions or who have..." 

As the officer continued to speak, the girl gazed limply out the window. I had a reason.

Image Credit: Alone in Space by YairMor on deviantART

[scifiinsix]

Eaten

Droplets of spit beaded on her leather collar as he sputtered and gagged. His fingers clawed helplessly at the buckles lining the back of her jacket. Pitiful.

Through her hands she felt a rhythmic pulse quicken and eventually slow to a dull throb. When she registered no pulse, she let go. His body slumped to the floor. She patted the outside of his dirty pockets. 

Nothing, she thought. Did he... 

She tossed her jacket to the pavement revealing a thin, porcelain frame. Leaning over him, her alloyed hand, still covered with torn skin and blood, started to glow. Blood soon fizzed and bubbled as it was boiled off. 

With a blazing digit she drew a line down his chest. Clothes and skin disintegrated in its path. Leaky capillaries were burned shut. She drew down through muscle, past bone, to the stomach. 

Reaching down with the other hand, she picked up an ACD chip half-covered in bile. Damaged, but useable. Now, she mused, let's find out what was so important.

Image Credit: FEMME FATALE 2 by DanLuVisiArt on DeviantArt

[scifiinsix]

Fly

If I fly fast enough we will never be together. I think that's what I want.

I don't need the heartache, I don't want the hurt. I can't take the pleading phone calls. I won't learn the ways he wants me to touch him, only to never touch again.

I'll just fly. I will fling myself into space like a proton in a supercollider, and at a similar speed. The second hand of my watch will slow.

He won't wait for me. I'll cry over the minutes but he won't spend those years on me. I won't ask for a fellow traveler.

I won't plead with the universe to let me travel back.

A weekend away from him will feel like a lifetime. It might be his.