by Russ Colson
STUPEFYING STORIES 2.01
July 2013
Editor: Bruce Bethke
Dotar Sojat: Henry Vogel
Technical Director: M. David Blake
Missing, Presumed Fed: Kersley Fitzgerald, David Yener Goodman
Cover, July 2013: "For the Love of a Grenitschee" by Aaron Bradford Starr
Published by: Rampant Loon Press, Lake Elmo, Minnesota
Special Thanks to: The Fearless Slush Pile Reader Corps. Erin, Guy, Barbara, Allan, Frances, Jason, Karen, Ryan, Arisia, Tyler, Ricky, Paul, Mike, David, and Alicia: we couldn't have done it without you. Thanks!
Copyright © 2013 Rampant Loon Media LLC
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July 2013: Vol. 2, No. 1
ISBN: 978-1-938834-70-7
STUPEFYING STORIES is a production of RAMPANT LOON PRESS, and is published in the United States of America by Rampant Loon Press, an imprint of Rampant Loon Media LLC, P.O. Box 111, Lake Elmo, Minnesota 55042.
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Copyright © 2013 Rampant Loon Media LLC
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright and Trademark Notices
Contents
From the Editor’s Desk
ALL THE BEAUTIFUL LIGHTS OF HEAVEN
by Russ Colson
SHOWING FAERIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT
by Julie Frost
INDIGENE
by Lawrence Buentello
FOR THE LOVE OF A GRENITSCHEE
by Mark Wolf
COTTAGE INDUSTRY
by Evan Dicken
THE ROBOT AGENDA
by Samantha Boyette
THE WRONG DOG
by Kyle Aisteach
THE MUSIC TEACHER
by Mark Niemann-Ross
THE LAST UNIT
by Judith Field
About STUPEFYING STORIES...
From the Editor’s Desk
By Bruce Bethke
...and we’re back! After a planned three-month hiatus that accidentally stretched out into six, STUPEFYING STORIES returns—retooled, reworked, and better than ever. With more and bigger stories by more outstanding authors, STUPEFYING STORIES MK.II is tanned, rested, and ready to rock!
To give you a foretaste of what’s to come in the months ahead: in this issue we are thrilled to be bringing you not one but two complete novelettes, “The Robot Agenda” by Samantha Boyette and “The Music Teacher” by Mark Niemann-Ross, as well as six more outstanding tales by Russ Colson, Julie Frost, Lawrence Buentello, Kyle Aisteach, and returning reader favorites Evan Dicken and Judith Field—not to mention our cover story, the unabashedly old-school alien world sci-fi pulp adventure, “For the Love of a Grenitschee,” by Mark Wolf.
There’s more news—there’s always more news—but you can read about that at the end of this issue. Because right now, it’s time for stories!
Happy reading,
Bruce Bethke
Editor, Stupefying Stories
ALL THE BEAUTIFUL LIGHTS OF HEAVEN
By Russ Colson
“If NOTHING ELSE, we’ll know God because he looks like us.” Gamal dropped his third dorsal tentacle around Shamar’s coelomic collar with casual affection. “Scripture assures us of that.”
Shamar stretched her central nostril into a brief smile. “And why would He have need of our form, or even breath, out among the stars?” Shamar, always the skeptic.
Talat, the tre of their triad, stepped between them, wrapping a tentacle around each of their waists where the lower skeleton ended at the upper coelom. “Let’s not argue today, of all days. We’ll find Him because it’s our destiny.”
Tre waved tris third tentacle at the silver spear sprouting up at the sky. “See our beautiful ship?”
It was beautiful, with its short cylinder set on three strong legs—symmetrical and sturdy, like Gamal’s race. Wonderfully made, as though it might last forever.
That’s how long it had to last. Forever.
Old Kalat stood with them. “Good journey, young friends. And may the Vault open for you.”
The Vault, with its Answers. Gamal’s best hope for finding some meaning to it all. He grabbed one end of the long stone stela, and Talat the other end, and they left Kalat on the tarmac still waving. Shamar led them up the ramp and into the ship.
They secured the Vault in the place built for it in bay three, and then proceeded to the bridge. Gamal strapped into his seat in front of the big central monitor, Shamar on his left and Talat on his right.
The ship shuddered beneath him as he engaged the engines. They hurtled into the blue dome of Almot for the last time. The stars came out as the air thinned. No going back now. Already, five hundred years had passed on Almot. The milky core of the galaxy began to resolve into separate stars. Shamar busied herself at the telescope console taking unnecessary readings, as tense as he.
Talat broke the tension with a hearty laugh, and tris middle eye winked in excitement. “We’re off!”
Shamar copied tris laughter, and her body relaxed in a wave that began in her right dorsal and traveled through her whole body. Gamal eased his grip on the acceleration lever. He hadn’t realized he held it so tightly.
What would they do without Talat?
He loved Talat. Shamar did too, in her way. But Gamal found Shamar—the thinking one—too analytical. Knowledge alone satisfied her.
Gamal wanted more than that. It bothered him not at all that they called him the feeling one. Feeling gave a meaning to life that thinking alone lacked. If not for that tension between him and Shamar, they would likely have become a Full Triad years ago. Everyone expected it when they were younger.
Now, it wasn’t clear they wanted children on this long journey. Or that bringing children into such a journey would be fair.
“Shamar, what’s the news from home?” His voice caught on the word home.
“As of last light, we’ve settled three new star systems.” Gamal heard the pride in her voice. Their race would do well among the stars. “We won’t get any new light until our first cycle from the Hole.”
Talat whacked Gamal across the back with tris left tentacle. “Our destiny!”
“Have you checked the intergalactic expansion rate?” Gamal asked Shamar, acknowledging Talat’s enthusiasm with a short wave.
She brought up a different screen. “It’s declined point oh-one per mille.”
Gamal glanced at Talat, busy again at tris own console. “Is that consistent with models?”
Talat nodded. “Exhalation is slowing. Dark energy influx rates are falling roughly as expected.”
“Then we can estimate the end?”
“Two-point-seven trillion years.” Talat stretched tris middle nostril in a wide smile.
Gamal laughed. “A mere three tril
lion years to the Answer.”
“Don’t be overconfident.” Shamar glanced at the other two. “Even if dark energy is the Breath of God as the Vault implies, that’s no proof He’ll be waiting at the end.”
“Scripture says He’ll be there.” Gamal frowned.
“Let’s don’t argue.” Talat rumbled conciliation, short and low—Gamal felt the vibration through his chair. “It’s our destiny. Whether God is there or not, we’ll have the Answer when the Vault opens.”
They reached the galactic Hole two ship-days later. Insertion into orbit did not go as planned. They were away from the control consoles when the alarms sounded. A misalignment in the gravity gradient compensators caused their view of the bridge to distort and threatened to tear them apart.
“Get to the safe zone!” Shamar struggled to follow her own advice against the intense gravity tides.
Talat, brave Talat, shunned the safe zone and turned toward the gradient compensator panel. “I’m on it,” tre said. Talat was off before Gamal could argue. Talat, the acting one.
Talat grasped an anchor on a wall to his right with a dorsal tentacle and strained against the pulsing forces. Tre made progress for a moment, but the extra stress on the limb burst its hydraulic skeleton. Tre screamed from the pain but soon recovered and moved forward in smaller steps. Tre reached the panel and held it open with one of two functioning dorsal limbs. With the other, tre adjusted the settings.
The alarms fell silent, the stillness surreal after the long noise. Then Talat collapsed to the floor of the bridge.
With the misalignment corrected, Gamal and Shamar rushed to tris side. Shamar checked tris main pump with her left dorsal.
“He’s alive.” She let out a breath. “Tre has a burst limb, but that will heal.”
Talat regained consciousness. “Did I....did I get it?”
“You got it.” Gamal wrapped all three dorsals around tris upper coelom in a tight embrace and rumbled his affection.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Talat,” Shamar chided. “We should have talked first.”
Talat laughed and stood, burst limb hanging limp. “I wasn’t in danger. We’re destined to succeed.”
Shamar snorted. “Don’t pit destiny too much against the laws of physics.”
Gamal nudged Talat. “You need to get to sick bay.”
Talat nodded and ambled off the bridge, holding tris dangling limb with the other two.
“How deep did we go?” Shamar asked when tre was gone.
Gamal checked the readings. “Deeper than we planned.”
“I suppose we overshot our first cycle target?”
Gamal keyed a command at his console. “By twenty-five thousand years.”
“We should go up. Check things out.”
Gamal brought them far enough out of the Hole to see the universe outside. Their ship whipped around the Hole fast enough for their visible and radio sensors, combined with time-averaged interferometry, to create virtual telescopes millions of miles wide. Big enough to see how their galaxy had changed.
“It looks like our people have pretty much conquered the galaxy,” Shamar reported. “They occupy thousands of worlds. Everywhere.”
Gamal smiled faintly, thinking of Talat. “I guess it’s destiny.”
¤
They came up for the second cycle in a million years, a little over three months ship time. They nearly collided with another ship in an orbit similar to theirs. Proximity alarms sounded. Gamal pulled their vessel away just in time.
A message crackled over the communication system.
“Stay away. We’re infected.”
“Infected with what?” Gamal tried to sound calm.
A moment of silence fell on the other end. “With the plague, of course.”
“Plague?”
“Get away. If the virus reaches your ship, there’s no cure. You may be our last hope.”
“What do you mean, last hope?” The normal lilt to Talat’s voice sounded subdued. “The galaxy’s filled with our people, trillions, quadrillions.”
Shamar’s quiet voice interrupted. “They’re gone, Talat. Even Almot’s empty.”
The ends of Gamal’s dorsals quivered. “How could a virus kill everyone?”
“It was inactive for four generations.” The com crackled from the intense radiation from the Hole. “By the time we knew the danger, everyone had it, on every world, in every city.”
“Where’d it come from?” Talat asked.
Hesitation. “There was a war. Viral robots were used to pacify a few worlds. Some stayed active, mutated. Got away from us.”
“Why d...do something so s...stupid?” Emotion made Shamar stutter.
“Leave now.” The voice sounded resigned. “A cloud of them is moving toward you.”
Gamal wanted to scream that God wouldn’t let this happen. That’s there’s meaning to life, and their race had a purpose.
But God had let it happen. And what purpose could an extinct race serve?
He didn’t understand. His mind spun with confusion and pain.
But he turned the ship back into the black Hole. They could hide there for a billion years or so. Until the plague mutated away.
“If we’re the last, we need to have children,” Shamar said, once they chose a stable orbit. Gamal recoiled from her words. So practical. So analytical.
“Our ship can sustain a hundred if needed,” Talat agreed. “It may be our destiny.”
Their reasons left Gamal cold. “Are we going to bring children into being for expediency alone and not because we love each other?”
The Vault assured him that life held more purpose than mere survival. When his people found it, circling their star on an orbital period longer than their race had existed, hope was reborn. ‘There’s meaning in living’ the Vault said. The full scope of what that meant would probably await the opening of the Vault, but the promise surely proved there was more to existence than an ephemeral evolutionary success.
Whatever his people’s fate, he knew it held meaning. Better to go to their end with dignity than betray that meaning.
They hid in the bowels of the Hole for a billion years. They went deeper than before, so ship time was only a year.
¤
A new race had conquered the galaxy when they rose for the third cycle. Complex beings whose cities spanned entire star systems.
They had a cellular structure, like Gamal’s people, but not organic cells. These were the distant progeny of the robotic virus that killed his people.
Gamal hated them. He hoped they were gone in the next cycle.
¤
They waited two billion years, just to be sure. When they rose from the depths of the Hole, the race was gone. Here and there a few of their great cities remained, dark and empty.
The sense of elation Gamal expected didn’t materialize. The race had been their offspring, in a way.
He longed for continuity. Meaning.
Shamar touched his left dorsal with her right. “We three can still have children. Maybe Talat’s right. Maybe it’s our destiny.”
“And bring them into this terrible universe where everything dies?”
Shamar recoiled at his tone. “It was just a thought.”
He rumbled apology. Not fair to be angry with Shamar. She didn’t make the universe.
He hadn’t been to the Vault since the launch. He went to bay three to see it.
He tucked his legs under him, the hydroxy-apatite skeleton in his ventral limbs providing a firm seat. He read the ancient symbols and recalled the translation.
“My name is Chartrae. I lived during the 33rd Breath of God and reached the end. I place the Answer on this Vault and send it into the next Breath so those who seek the beautiful lights of heaven can find Hope. When the next Breath is at an end, the Answer of the Vault will open again. There’s meaning in living.”
The Vault held the Answer.
Gamal didn’t even know the question.
T
alat came into the bay. Tre draped a tentacle over his collar and rumbled deep affection.
“Want to talk?” tre asked.
Gamal waved his dorsal in frustration. “The Vault promises answers. What kind of answers can there be? It’s all an endless cycle, living and dying. There’s no meaning.”
Tris laugh untangled the knot growing in Gamal’s belly. “The journey is enough, Gamal. It’s our destiny!”
¤
The most dangerous part of their travel came when they cycled. At that time, their velocity differed from the debris tumbling into the Hole. On their fifth cycle, they collided with an asteroid, invisible against the dark sky. Gamal and Shamar were on the bridge and felt the impact.
Training took over, and Gamal hit the emergency seal. Pressure doors all over the ship clanged shut, including the one to the bridge. Shamar was half-way into a pressure suit. Gamal put one on too.
Gamal pulled the helmet over his head and glanced at his console. “We’ve lost pressure from the engine room through about a tenth of the unused living section. The breach can’t be too big. One roll of repair film is probably enough.”
It took longer than normal to traverse the ship. They checked each pressure lock manually to ensure the other side remained airtight. They separated at the cafeteria. Shamar went toward storage bay one and Gamal to shuttle bay four.
He radioed Talat, but got no response. Concerned, he quickened to a trot, his three magnetic boots beating a staccato click-click-t-click down the metal corridor.