The Fiction
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
THE WRONG STUFF
A moonrocket is not the usual means of stabbing somebody to death. The usual tool is a kitchen knife, because most killings are domestics. To the best of my knowledge, a Saturn 5 moonrocket has never been used to dispatch a single victim, let alone hundreds of them. Not until I started, anyway.
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EarthNetGlobal...02/25/08/1634EST...Channel 5...CONTACT FROM ANOTHER WORLD...WE ARE NOT ALONE...Alien starship approaching Earth. Arecibo takes the first call. Defence forces on full alert. Hubble repositioned. We go live to Channel 1...
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There were 3 stages to a Saturn 5 rocket. The S-IC (first stage) had five F1 engines, which delivered a total thrust of 33 meganewtons. The S-II (second stage) and S-IVB (third stage) used J2 engines, five on the S-II and one on the S-IVB. The last Saturn 5 to stand on the launchpad was110.64 metres tall, the titanium 1:400 scale model that I am stabbing repeatedly into Bill Simpson’s flabby neck is 27.5 centimetres tall when standing upright on my desk. The real Saturn 5 weighed over 2700 tonnes in launch configuration. I’m not sure how much my model weighs, I wonder if Bill does. Crimson comets of blood spray out of the puncture wounds in his neck, their elliptical orbit ensuring an inevitable collision with me, the carpet, the walls, the chair he is sagging in and the photomosaic of Mars on his desk.
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EathNetGlobal...02/26/08/0837EST...Channel 5...I COME IN PEACE SAYS ALIEN...Arecibo starts receiving data from the starship...sole occupant is ambassador from Enkassa, the alien home planet ...Earth invited to join the Enkassan Federation...
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A grey world enlivened by contact from the stars. Outside, the rain falls in hard metallic sheets, ricocheting from the flat planes and sharp angles of buildings, but slicing through those not protected. Inside, it is warm gloomy and stinking. I don’t know if I’m in a bar or at a party. People of all size, shape and desirability are drinking and talking, their voices merging to form a continuous wave of white noise.
Live feed from Hubble’s telecam of the alien ship flickers on the TV. The commentator is babbling self importantly - ludicrously so to my ears - about how we can benefit from joining the Enkassan Federation, improve our technology and accelerate mankind’s inevitable colonisation of the solar system. I know that this concept excites many people, but the thought of humans spiralling out from Earth and spreading like a plague through the galaxy makes me feel disconnected and homicidal. I imagine my Saturn 5 launching into a clear blue sky and embedding itself in a chest cavity.
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EarthNetScience...02/28/08/1300EST...Channel 9...DISSEMINATION OF DATA DOWNLOAD FROM ENKASSAN STARSHIP...Enkassa is an earth sized rocky planet (key +2 for pix). Thirty per cent of the planet is habitable landmass, with the carbon based Enkassans being the dominant species. Photosynthesising woody plants are abundant and home to mammalian, reptilian and insectoid species. The remaining seventy percent of the planet is covered in water. There are no ice caps and the atmosphere, although similar to Earth, is warmer by an average of 8 degrees celsius. Enkassa orbits Phelbia, a gas giant three times the mass of Jupiter. Phelbia in turn orbits the parent star - known to us as Upsilon Andromedae - which is 44 light years from our own sun. The planet we now know as Phelbia and two other gas giants were discovered orbiting Upsilon Andromedae in 1988 by San Francisco State University astronomers Geoffrey Marcy and R. Paul Butler, using doppler spectroscopy data analysis. Following this discovery, Upsilon Andromedae became a shortlisted target for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, due for launch in August 2009...
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I loved my sister dearly, but now she is dead. Her parents - I don’t think of them as mine anymore - had inexorably converted her into something that evolution had not planned, a stultification of all her promise. After converting my sister, they tried to do the same to me. They achieved success, but not in the way they imagined. I saw my sister three days before she died. She was only twenty seven, yet looked fifty - her blonde hair falling out, the green blue eyes I remembered now a dull and sightless grey, her gentle, lilting voice compressed to a croaking monotone, her body horribly emaciated. She no longer possessed the strength to purge her stomach of the food that was being forced into it, but by then it didn’t really matter. A year after my sister’s funeral, the thing I used to know as father had choked on his own blood trying to protect the thing I knew as mother. I killed her next and then burned down the house I used to know as home. These were the first humans I ever killed. Previously, I had killed only animals - cats and dogs mainly.
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EarthNetScience...03/12/08/2200EST...Channel 9...FRUSTRATION AS ENKASSAN AMBASSADOR REFUSES TO DIVULGE SECRET OF FASTER THAN LIGHT TRAVEL...all we know is this - the Enkassan ambassador has advised that the journey from Enkassa to Earth took three days and speculation is rife as to how this was achieved...
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Eating at Walt Shelby’s place is essential, but dull. I sit in his hideously decorated dining room, elegantly forking overcooked vegetables into my mouth. The wine is an excellent Zinfandel, although I suspect the Shelbys purchased it because of the pretty label. Mrs. Shelby - clueless, badly made up and drunk - is yacking loudly about some new shrubs she has purchased from Wal Mart.
"...and then they suggested I try the holly, but I didn’t really want holly, but they said it’d compliment the picket fence, but the spines, I said..."
"Holly is fashionable in Europe, Mrs Shelby, but I’d have suggested Prunus lusitanica instead, far better suited to Florida and it would really compliment your architecture. It has these dark green leaves that suggest real permanence..." I trail off, suppressing a giggle as Walt unsuccessfully chases a rogue potato around his plate. He is studiously ignoring his drunken wife, trying to hide the fact that he hates her even more than I do. Mrs. Shelby stares at me with a glazed intensity, her expression one of horticultural adoration.
“...why don’t I drive you to that plant centre up on Kingswood this afternoon, Mrs. Shelby? It’d give me great pleasure to find Prunus lusitanica for you." Actually, it would give me even greater pleasure to hack off Mrs. Shelby’s head with Walt’s axe, so why the fuck did I make such a dumb timewasting offer? As penance for being stupid - discipline is paramount - I stab my right thigh quite hard with my food fork, unseen by the perfect couple. Waiting for the pain to subside, I gaze through the solarized windows at the white picket fence, glinting imperiously in the bright sunshine. Cocooned within its protective embrace is the neat garden, consisting of artificially green lawn, antiseptic soil and manicured shrubs. Upon the smooth asphalt driveway sits Mrs. Shelby’s BMW, haphazardly parked with the drunken insouciance of the chronic alcoholic. Feeling physically sick, I imagine stabbing Mrs. Shelby with my Saturn 5. The sickness subsides, but a headache is looming, expanding, filling my brain, not with the instantaneous violence of a supernova, but with the measured aeonic pace of a swelling red giant. As my brain pushes against its meninges, I experience a temporal shift. With seamless precision, the BMW transmogrifies into a pockmarked red rock. The rest of this soulless suburban scene - the clean concrete road, the faux antique streetlamps, the swimming pools, the orderly timber framed houses, the neat eucalyptus trees, the neighbour polishing his Bentley - dissolves into a rusty red plain. All external noises - Mrs. Shelby’s tiresome drone, the clatter of cutlery on china plates, the air conditioning, the ice machine - fade out, to be replaced with the soft moan of a musical wind.
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EarthNetGlobal...03/25/08/0800EST...Channel 5...DOUBLE FIRST...PARKER TO VISIT ENKASSA...first man on Mars (key + 6 for library pix) chosen as Earth ambassador to Enkassa. Mars hero Colonel Jackson G. Parker unanimously appointed by UN Space Council to accompany the Enkassan ambassador to her home planet. NASA administrator Walton B. Shelby said : "Jack Parker is a hero to me - I cried when I saw him walk on Mars. He is uniquely qualified to undertake this mission." Colonel Parker is not your average astronaut - and your average astronaut is anything but average. A former combat pilot, he has degrees in biology, geology and astronomy. On 25 December 2005, he became the first human to set foot on Mars after a nine month voyage on the USS Wells. Since returning from Mars, Colonel Parker has selflessly used his fame to help raise millions of dollars for charity...
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EarthNetScience...03/27/08/1200EST...Channel 9...SIMPSON’S DREAM TO BECOME A REALITY - SUPER PLANTS WILL COLONISE MARS...Amery Ice Shelf, Antarctica...Scientists at the Simpson Corporation’s PhotoGene Research Station are now convinced that the so called Black Rainbow plants will survive and thrive on Mars. Bill Simpson’s dream - to seed Mars with climate changing plants - now seems close to a reality. Head of PGRS Professor Don McKinsey predicts that within the year Black Rainbow will be en route to Mars. "We’ve spent the last two years developing Black Rainbow and demonstrating that it can survive in a simulated Martian environment," said McKinsey. "Now we’re almost ready to begin the mission of the century - to send Black Rainbow to Mars and so begin the process of terraforming the Red Planet. This was Bill Simpson’s dream and a habitable Mars will one day be his legacy to the world." The brutal murder of Simpson last October remains unsolved...
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I watch the President on TV, talking to the alien on a giant com screen. I don’t know what either of them is saying because the sound is turned down. The Prez looks like he is trying to lipsynch to Tom Jones blasting from my speakers. Maybe he is, maybe he’s a Tom Jones fan and connected to me somehow. The Prez looks good, but he’s full of shit, everyone knows it, but nobody cares. I don’t know if the Enkassan girl has the hots for him, but she sure is smiling. Or maybe it’s a grimace - hard to tell with these funny lips. Maybe he repels her. Maybe she thinks her planet has made a big mistake contacting Earth - let’s try again in 1,000 years, assuming the morons don’t annihilate themselves in the meantime. Giggling, I ask my companion if the Prez makes her horny like I know Tom Jones does. She doesn’t answer. My anger fires up, there is a chainsaw screaming at full power in my head, the ceiling and floor begin advancing towards each other, compressing the walls and the TV screen, distorting the face of the Prez, causing his mouth to swallow his head and making him seem more alien than the alien. Then it all stops, as I remember that I stabbed my companion to death a few hours ago. That would explain her rudeness. I feel more conciliatory then.
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EarthNetGlobal...03/29/08/2230EST...Channel 5...FBI INVESTIGATES THREAT TO KILL PARKER ...Ambassador Parker, currently preparing for Enkassan trip, receives death threat from religious fundamentalists opposed to alien contact. "Listen, I’m religious too - I’m a Catholic - but I’m going for all of humanity," said Parker. The FBI refused to confirm or deny a possible link between this threat and the Bill Simpson killing...
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I walk into the office. There is a tall guy standing at my desk, his back to me, staring at a wall mounted photomosaic of Mars. He senses me and starts to turn around, while I increase my pace towards him, reaching into my jacket pocket as I close the gap. He manages to flash a badge and smile before I flash the Saturn 5 out of my pocket and ram it hard into his chest. Right on target - his mouth goes slack and a long breath rattles out. As he staggers back against the wall, the badge dropping from his hand, I look into his eyes, but he doesn’t meet my stare, choosing instead to gaze very blankly in the general direction of my bookcase. The rattle stops and he is dead, his legs buckling. I follow him to the floor, hanging onto my Saturn 5, not wanting it to be twisted out of his chest - it’s a good plug and I don’t want blood on my carpet. I am considering where to stash the body when the phone trills. I sweep it up in one smooth movement.
"Hi, this is Colonel Parker."
I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I look good. I look fucking great.
"Sorry Colonel, I had a Mr. Kempner from the FBI in here just now talking about that death threat made against you. He wanted to ask you some questions. Has he found you yet?"
Only by violently kicking my left shin with my right heel and biting my left index finger do I manage to stop myself screaming to whoever else is listening that I’m going to stab them repeatedly with a fucking moonrocket until their body is drained of every last drop of blood.
"Um...no, I haven’t seen Mr...ah...Kempner...did you say death threat, Jimbo?" I pick up the remote as I talk and fire up my wall mounted Bang & Olufsen.
"Yes sir. Some loon who thinks that anyone talking to aliens should be macheted into little pieces. You’re the main man Colonel, so this guy wants to start with you. Guess the Feds have gotta follow it up."
Jimbo’s tone implied that the notion of me hacked into little pieces by a mouth foaming religious fundamentalist was staggeringly funny. Fucking moron. I briefly imagine plucking out Jimbo’s eyes with the Saturn 5 and feeding them to my angel fish, before relenting and making a mental note to have the retard fired instead.
"Yeah, I guess they do. Thanks for the call, Jimbo. No more now, OK? I gotta put my best suit on, gotta date with the alien, remember? I’ll speak to Mr. Kempner if I see him." Laughing, I cut the connection and turn to the FBI man. He is spread out on his back, a small smile on his face, the Saturn buried to the base of its second stage in his chest. I gently retrieve it. Thankfully, there is hardly any blood on the Saturn and only a slowly spreading stain on his white shirt - not enough to mess my carpet. Good. I drag the body across the office and stuff it in my toy trunk, as 53 Miles West of Venus by the B-52’s flows mellifluously from my pen shaped Bang & Olufsen speakers.
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Once, in 1976, the skin of the Viking 2 lander was burnished smooth. Today, it is pitted and scarred, the result of over thirty years bombardment by micrometeorites and abrasive Martian dust. No longer alien in appearance, the lander now looks like a relic of the extinct Martian civilisation that it once came to seek. Bent, battered and long dead, the Viking’s parabolic antenna aims beyond the pink sky of Mars and towards a point in the heavens traversed by Earth during its journey around the sun. But the home planet is no longer listening.
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Later, suited up and almost ready, I gaze through the west window of the observation deck at the swollen redness of the late afternoon sun. Through the opposite window, I observe my waiting shuttle, less than three kilometres away. I know the shuttle to be a pure white creature, but the setting sun has mutated it into a bloodied and vengeful bird of death. A babble of voices floats upwards from the waiting phalanx of press, whose defences I must now penetrate to reach the sanctuary of the shuttle. I consider Simpson, with his insane plan to convert the dead beauty of Mars into a festering cesspit of humanity and I am able to put my own madness into a cool perspective. Simpson is dead now, but his kind are too numerous and I cannot stop them on my own. It is my good luck that the Enkassans chose to announce themselves at this critical juncture. Despite their peaceable nature, I’m sure that they have destructive capabilities. All that is required is a little provocation. I drop the Saturn 5 into my flight bag and head for the elevator.
Copyright ©2000 Dan McNeil.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Inspired by Tony Blair, Brian Hutton and Basil Brush - a full ten years before events...
DOG COUNTRY
(Spinning slowly, sliding free,
The greyhound bus came flying at me).
It had been running and running around the track for six and a half years, people betting ginormous sums of money that it would never beat the Nova Scotian Labrador, but in the end it was the rank outsider from Newfoundland, "Ontario Smackhead" that came romping home. "Home, ah yes! Home is where the heart is!" barked the psychopathic struck-off East German refugee surgeon from Dresden, as he ripped the still pumping heart from the chest of the Nato soldier who had been born of a nice middle class family (two loving parents, a charming if slightly dim older sister and a three legged daschund being the main components) in Bruges twenty-three years earlier, and was now dying most horribly on the Isle of Dogs.
"Disunited Dog Country, par for the course really," laughed Captain Basil Brush in clipped tones as he smashed Sergeant Nathaniel Spaniel over the head with a Jeremy Eight-Iron, horrible flared polyester trousers with vomit inspiring check pattern (circa 1974) flapping around his poxy-foxy legs. Sergeant Nathaniel Spaniel fell to the ground, four dumpy legs twitching spasmodically, as the Penguin moved in, slicing Captain Brush’s neck with a sliver of tin.
"Ooohhwahhhh, ooohhwahhhh, bum bum!" screamed Brush.
"You do not spell boom boom in that anally fixated fashion, you moron glove puppet," hissed the Penguin.
"You stupid bastard bar of cheapo chocolate!" yelled the director at the Penguin. "You’ve cut Crispin’s goddamn wrist with that bit of tin. Get outta this goddamn studio!"
The Penguin, now visibly melting in the harsh studio lights, looked over to where Crispin, sad Crispin with the huge ego and delusions of acting alongside Jeremy Eight-Iron, was trying to pull a bloodstained Captain Basil Brush from his right arm. To the Penguin it appeared as if Crispin had been trying to fist Captain Brush up the arse. Crispin finally wrenched the corpse of Captain Brush from his arm. This unfortunately made matters much worse, as to anybody but the most blithering idiot it would have been obvious that the latex inner body of Brush acted on Crispin’s almost severed wrist with much the same splendid efficiency as a tourniquet. Crispin ran around like a stuck pig, great fountains of blood spraying from his wrist. As he died, the Penguin finally melted into oblivion. Human blood and Penguin chocolate swirled and mingled in peace on the studio floor as they never could have done in life.
The inquest into Captain Brush’s death was an amusing affair.
Colonel Arthur Doberman-Pinscher was the prosecuting counsel. All well and good, except that there was nobody alive worth prosecuting. Crispin - dead due to sudden loss of blood. The Penguin - transmogrified into liquid chocolate. Nathaniel Spaniel – brains splattered all over the rug. The Nato soldier from Bruges - not really part of this story anyway. Doberman-Pinscher realised that he was basically a spare prick in an empty courtroom. Barking in a manic fashion, he trotted unsteadily toward the drinks cabinet, poured himself another bowl of milk, and settled back in his basket to watch the final instalment of 45 Minutes to Doomsday.
Copyright ©1993/2003 Dan McNeil
Arnolfini Reaction is an experience based mood piece. In plain un-pompous english, it's the authorial equivalent of doodling. Nothing wrong with authorial doodling. As with pictorial doodles, some are crap and some are good - it's the practice that matters...
ARNOLFINI REACTION.
Sitting next to her, in the smoke of the Arnolfini, close, but not yet touching, I notice that her accent is Bristolian, birdlike, unlike the students clotting the bar. Is she a bird?
A second beer and her accent begins to replicate that of the students. Her speech slows, the cadences become ponderous, slurred. I like her more now, although I understand her even less.
Another beer and her speech and that of the students finally merges, forming a continuous wave of white noise. The situation is futile - understanding her now is completely impossible. Although our feet touch and our ankles hook together, I realise that I must act tonight.
Previously, I drank with Rebecca. Rebecca came from Burnham. When Rebecca became impossible to understand, I drank with Cat. Cat felt more civilised than Rebecca.
Sitting next to Cat, in the smoke of the Arnolfini, close, but not yet touching, I notice that her accent is Bristolian, birdlike...
Copyright ©2003 Dan McNeil
The original version of Appetite was written in early 2002, and ran to 1,500 words. I wanted to send it to Antipodean SF,
but their limit was 500 words. So, lots of tedious editing (actually, it's good practice for keeping your storywriting minimal). Antipodean SF accepted the story, with some minor editing. A year later, I sent the original 500 word version to Fragment.
Here it is...
APPETITE.
Roberts stepped from the Arcachon onto flat grey sand, and scanned the horizon. Utter desolation all the way, the missing-without-trace Gironde class cruiser Bordeaux nowhere to be seen.
"Henri, no Bordeaux. We got the right coordinates?"
"Sure we have." Henri sounded puzzled.
"Maybe it's buried," said Roberts.
"No - sand's too shallow. Unless it's destroyed, the beacon separated..." Henri sounded doubtful. Gironde class beacons didn't separate. The Bordeaux had to be here.
Roberts scanned the horizon again and froze. A spacesuited figure stood five metres away, motionless. "Jesus fucking Christ! Henri! You see this?"
"See what?"
"There's someone in front of me. Spacesuit I’m coming in." Roberts was gabbling in panic.
"Hang on John. Calm down. I see only you on the screen. Tell me what you see."
"EVA suit, can't see a face, standing there like a monument. Came from fucking nowhere!"
"Okay, I hear you. You still want to come back in?"
Roberts faced the figure, breathing deeply. "No, but come out take a look."
"Suiting up then. Ten minutes."
"Okay." Roberts took a step forward, saw himself reflected in the figure's gold visor.
"Thanks for coming," said a voice in his helmet that wasn't Henri.
"Who are you?" Roberts squeaked.
"This is easy," said the voice.
Ice crawled up Roberts’ spine. "What's easy?" he whispered.
"This," said the figure, pointing.
Roberts half turned, not wanting to lose sight of the figure, but he caught movement in his peripheral vision. The Arcachon - sinking fast into the grey sand. "Henri!" he shouted. "Get out! Get the fuck out!" He turned back to the figure and screamed.
"Are you doing this?"
No answer.
Roberts spun back to face the Arcachon. Only the central pod was visible, descending like a submarine’s conning tower. Then nothing. Grey sand flowed over the grave.
Shaking and terrified, Roberts faced the figure.
"Your turn," it said, seeming suddenly taller.
Roberts heard a loud hissing. Alarms chimed. His suit was
ruptured, the pressure was dropping. Struggling for breath, he felt a terrible burning pain in his feet and legs. Looking down, he saw red stained sand up to his knees.
Then he understood.
Each particle of sand was a cutting and digesting biomechanical organism, each the component part of a hungry planet.
Roberts stopped screaming when the sand reached his chest.
The planet's ancestor had been a von Neumann machine, designed to convert the raw materials of its destination planet into replicas of itself. Somewhere along the way, a descendent of the original machine evolved sentience and decided it wanted to become a planet instead of looking for one. It began by hunting for small debris in the local star system. Growing larger, the machine planet realised it no longer needed to hunt
for food. Food was delivered instead. Random debris were attracted by gravity. Curiosity and subterfuge brought spacecraft and their crew. Arrivals never departed. The planet continued growing. The planet's ambition was to become a gas giant or even a star.
The planet was completely insane, but it was having a ball.
Copyright ©2003 Dan McNeil
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Monday, August 11, 2003
