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CHAPTER 1

ChronoCrisis 3000

Andrew Lloyd-Jones

Commander Richards,

If you are reading this it means that the photonic quantum drive worked, and your journey to the future was a success. According to our telemetry data, predictions of the Earth's orbit, etc. etc., you should have appeared close to the spot where you will have hopefully found this letter.

We are all naturally dead at your point in time, as we were unable to prevent The Device from activating itself in our current timeline. However, you should, as we have discussed, be able to gather enough data in the future to enable us to work out a weakness in the Device's program in the past.

During your reconnaissance, you will need to use your digital scopes to gather visual data. We cannot be sure whether or not the pictures will continue to exist on your return, because in theory, if your mission is a success and you return with the necessary information, the future you are currently witnessing will already have ceased to exist. Although it could continue to exist, but in a different universe, in which case you will have moved through dimensions instead of time. Greg in quantum mechanics however seems to think that you move in both time and dimensional space as a result of your jump. He came in the other day waving a coat hanger and a globe, and this was apparently meant to demonstrate something about the space time continuum, but none of us could understand what he was on about.

Incidentally, we came up with a range of names for this mission as part of a brainstorm session we had once you'd left. Here's what we came up with:

Future Trek Future Jump

Future Trek 3000

Future Jump 3000

Operation: Future Jump

ChronoCrisis

Time Tour

Time Trek

Time Jump

Time of Your Life

Time Trek 3000

Personally I liked ChronoCrisis, but in the end we went with Dan's suggestion which was FutureJump 3000. Basically Dan just added 3000 to everyone else's suggestions which no one else seemed to spot.

The important thing however is that now you have arrived at your destination in time, you must proceed immediately to the point on the map marked with an X. This is where you will find essential medical equipment and food supplies for your stay in the future. Our simulations predict that following the activation of The Device, and the subsequent death of all living matter on the planet, the atmosphere will have become a deadly mix of poisonous, potentially lethal gasses. That being the case, there is unlikely to be anything edible in the vicinity. It is therefore vital that you find the area marked on the map, which should be within an hour's walk or thereabouts depending on how quickly you can move, the presence of surface magma, etc.

This would be a good time to apologise for the fact that this letter and your essential medical and food supplies are not actually in the same place. While it might have made sense to put everything together, during the brainstorm Dan pointed out that if we separated everything up there was less chance of it being discovered. Also, Chloe reckoned that illogical thinking would confuse The Device, again giving us a greater chance of success.

Once you have located the medical equipment, food supplies etc. then proceed immediately to the point on the map marked by a box with a cross on it, like a church with a tower. This is the location of the hidden ECM system you'll need to mask your body's naturally occurring electrical activity from The Device's sensors. Without it you're vulnerable to detection by The Device. The point on the map marked with a circle and a cross like a church with a steeple is where we predict The Device's main defences will be located, so try not to confuse the two. The batteries to make the ECM system work are marked on the map by the symbol for a disused lighthouse.

We believe at your time in history The Device will have migrated predominantly below ground, where it will be using the earth's geothermal energy as some kind of power source, but with enough hardware above ground to allow for communication with The Device home planet. Your main target is above ground, and marked on the map with the two crossed swords. This is where Chloe's projections suggest one of The Device's main Terran interfaces will be located. We don't know exactly what this will look like, but it is vital you get close enough for detailed images of its design. Now I come to think of it, you might not have actually met Chloe. I think she started with us a couple of months after you left, having come from Cybermark Industries. She and I had a bit of an affair for a few weeks after the Christmas party, but we were both so incredibly busy, what with everything that's been going on, that it just didn't really work out. We're still good friends and stuff, which is the main thing. It's funny really, thinking about it, how none of this matters anymore, and that you're reading this after we've been dead for maybe a few thousand years.

Anyway. Make sure you don't approach The Device without the cover of the ECM or it'll detect your electrical activity and defend itself. Dan has designed the ECM to last for approximately three hours once you're in range of The Device, and after that you'll need to recharge the batteries, but you should have plenty of time. Dan started seeing Chloe not long after she and I mutually decided that it just wasn't the right time for us to get involved in a long-term relationship. I think they tried to keep it a secret from everyone but sooner or later these things come out. It was the same with her and me – let's not tell anyone, she said. It's better that way. But like I say, it's hard to keep a secret really, and I ended up seeing the two of them together outside her flat one night after they came back from dinner at a little restaurant in Tooting and the game was up. I think they're out with each other tonight, while I'm writing this in the lab. Everyone has started having Device Parties because we all know it's just a matter of time, but someone's got to make sure things get done. This letter wasn't just going to write itself. I mean, I could be out there, having a good time with some gorgeous lab assistant at some big party or whatever, but no, I'm here, with piles of data to analyse from The Device.

But that's ne. I've had this strange sense of calm come over me the past few days, and I really feel like I'm here to make a difference. After all, you're reading this, aren't you? And you're the last living creature on the planet. And where are Dan and Chloe? Atoms of dust, that's where. Forgotten debris of a miserable sham of a life. And who cares? Not me, I'll tell you that for nothing. Not you either I should think. You're probably more worried about the dangerous life-threatening mission you're on.

So anyway, you've gathered the data, taken the pictures; hopefully you've not been caught as long as Dan's crappy ECM works properly. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it breaks down, he's that rubbish at his job. He spends more time on his Facebook page than he does on anything else. Just because he's got fifty thousand friends or whatever and he was voted 'Sexiest Scientist' in Grazia, he thinks that gives him the right to chat online with schoolgirls all day. He keeps going on about how it's important for PR and funding and that but I can't see how he's making any money out of it at all. I wouldn't mind if they sent him cash but all he gets in the post are dodgy pictures and cheap knickers.

So that's about it. The photonic batteries you'll need to get home are somewhere near the place on the map that looks like a windmill. They should work I suppose.

Good luck with 'Future Jump 3000' or whatever.

The future of the human race is in your hands.

Best regards, Dave

Icosi Bladed Scissors

Alex Smith

'Such a hot afternoon,' Baochi said. Are you sure you want to die?'

Although she was a lazy assassin, Baochi had outlived the fool and the plagiarist by several centuries, insisting a daily bowl of raw beetroot borscht was the cause of her ungodly longevity (however, it must be noted that over time a good many who hankered after immortality had tried to emulate Baochi and subsist on borscht alone, but these aspirants merely suffered years of indigestion, pink-stained teeth and ruby-coloured urine, before a younger than average Death spared them from swallowing down any further bowls of borscht).

Basil, the man with aching ankles, sighed and his sigh was fat like a leopard's purr. 'I'm so tired of my ankles aching,' he said, to which Baochi replied, 'And I so weary from the heat.' She cooled herself with what appeared to be a giant fan, but closer inspection revealed the slats were blades, twenty of them, capable of simultaneous shredding; it was no fan then, rather a score of Icosi bladed scissors.

'Basil, darling, I'm in no mood for killing ... I will tell you some little tale of each of my twenty blades, and then if you're still set on a gruesome demise by the Icosi-jian (jian is Mandarin for scissors), well, I suppose I'll have to indulge you.'

Since Baochi was superstitious about starting at the beginning, she spoke first of blade number two, that of a pair of sewing scissors, which she claimed to have plucked from the painting Degas only called his 'genre picture', although in spite of the artist's wish, commentators ever after insist the painting be named The Rape, and still others claim it must depict a scene from a novel by Zola.

'And this blade, aah, I so delight in it, Basil! From Thomas Jefferson's scissors, the pair he used in 1819 to cut up his Bible and make it what he thought Jesus would have liked: a book without a virgin birth, a resurrection and that whole bunch of far-fetched miracles.' Baochi chortled and admired the steel damascened blade and then turned her attention to the more provincial fourth blade, one that snick-snacked in a scene from JM Coetzee's Boyhood.

The fifth of the blades was the most peculiar, it was a shimmering chemical splicer stolen from the history of DNA research. Thus continued Baochi until Basil and his aching ankles knew the tale of the full score.

'Now, what is your decision?' Baochi asked. 'Unchanged,' Basil replied, 'though I have this last question: why Icosi? Why twenty blades, when one would surely suffice?'

'Why be bland,' said Baochi. 'Why be unimaginative and unremarkable? Death can be splendid.' Basil was filled with satisfaction, so unexpected and comforting, he became anxious she would change her mind.

'Do it now,' he said, 'While I'm still happy.' He closed his eyes and listened to the swish of the waves against bollards and readied himself for an end and Baochi yawned.

'Aah, surely you're too warm to die, why must it be today? I don't usually ask my clients, it makes no difference to me; I'm a professional, so you don't have to reply if you prefer not to.'

For the last time in his life, Basil sighed fat as a leopard's purr.

'It must; my bones are chock-full of cancer; and far greater is the gruesomeness my own cells have in store for me than the worst death your Icosi scissors could ever hope to achieve.'

And so with elemental grace Baochi rose and slew him.

Content Management

Derek Ivan Webster

'I'm forgetting something.' His eyes were closed; his fingertips pressed into his temples. His hands quivered as if straining to hold the skull together.

'It couldn't be that important. You never forget anything,' observed his wife as she diced peppers for a salad. The kitchen opened over a bar to the dining room table where he sat. She glanced up at intervals to regard his lone figure, elbows driving divots into the pea-green placemat.

'You look like you're praying,' she laughed.

'Just looking for something.' His fingers occasionally clinched tighter around his head, then let loose. It was a steady rhythm that resembled the draw of a pump.

'Need any help?'

He didn't respond. The mental suction continued. She went back to her salad.

He knew something was misplaced inside his head. It was a small thing but important. There were fractured references extending back to a no longer existent source. Broken lines of context fluttered at the edge of empty pockets that should have been memory. It was like trying to produce the image from a voice recording of a conversation that never took place.

'Is it someone's birthday?' he called out.

'No birthday today.' She frowned.

'This week?'

'No birthday this week.' Her frown deepened. She finished with the peppers and swept them to the side. Mushrooms would come next, but they needed retrieving from the refrigerator. She set the knife down and remained watching her husband.

He dug his thumbs deeper into the skin above his ears, leafing through the pile of internal notices that comprised his mental calendar. 'It's not Edwin's recital. That's this Saturday. Pauly has her shots a week from tomorrow. Bill-pay was yesterday. Your conference call with the board is postponed 'til next month.'

'Try something more personal,' his wife nudged.

'You know what it is?' His eyes remained closed, his face focused, but it was his turn to frown.

She shook her head. 'Are you trying to be funny?'

'I have never felt less funny.'

'And you expect me to believe you've forgotten tomorrow?'

'Tomorrow?' He opened his eyes for the first time, releasing his confusion in blinking increments. His hands stopped rubbing at his head, though the fingers remained firmly rooted. 'I've forgotten something for tomorrow? Something personal.'

'Yes.' The single word clicked into place like the sharp cock of a pistol.

'Not a birthday?'

'No.'

'A dinner? Do we have reservations?'

'Not that I'm aware.'

'Friends are coming to town?'

He was watching her now with some care. With each negation her brows were raised higher and her lips pursed tighter. The crows' feet had appeared at the corner of her eyes. That was never a good sign.

'A doctor's appointment?'

Her head shook no.

'Dancing lessons?' No. 'A night at the opera?' No. 'Tickets to Monaco?' No.

Her face had flushed full red. There was a dangerous, twitching friction beneath her chin. Her carefully applied makeup began to crack through with the tiniest of lines.

'I am so sorry, darling.' He let his hands lower slowly to the table. 'I have absolutely no idea what tomorrow is.'

'Tomorrow,' her words were so tightly drawn as to twang between syllables, 'Is our anniversary.'

They stared at each other over the open bar. Her eyes flared with a carefully checked tension. His eyes retreated into their sockets. He wet his lips. His mouth opened, started to form a thought; it was quickly abandoned.

'Well?' she demanded. 'Don't you have anything to say about our anniversary?'

'Our anniversary.' He could feel her glare cording around his throat. 'Our anniversary is tomorrow.'

She gave him one final nod: a line in the sand. One more misstep and he would no longer be able to salvage the situation. The hands clutched once again to his head. His eyes snapped closed; his mind turned in upon itself, chewing through layer after layer of insulating memory. He skittered across an endless landscape of carefully indexed data. He spun through every category, within every search parameter, across every partition. He pored over memory logs, data storage receipts, system back-up archives. He looked everywhere. He found nothing.

'Our anniversary?'

'Yes.' She strained to keep her tone level.

With no recourse left, he simply let the horrible question slip free. 'Our anniversary of what?'

His wife's face went immediately, completely, severely blank. He took a deep breath and did his best to prepare for the storm. Tempered steel came unbound behind her eyes. She would defrag him slowly until nothing of consequence remained.

The storm didn't come. Instead she breathed out a straw house's worth of tension, wiped her hands on a dishtowel, came around the bar and took a seat at the table adjacent to his. She held out her hands and forced a smile. It was weak but he fully appreciated the attempt.

'Take my hand,' she said. He complied. 'When were we married?'

'My final go live date was –'

'When were we married?' she gently corrected him.

'On January 12th, 2020.'

'Good,' she nodded. 'And what is tomorrow's date?'

'January 12th, 2025.'

'Exactly,' she smiled. 'Now, define anniversary.'

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Excerpted from "Weird Lies"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Arachne Press.
Excerpted by permission of Arachne Press.
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