July 7, 2011

From “RegenKit” by Donald S. Truman Jr.

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“It’s…complex,” Dr. Wiesenbaum said. “There were studies of starfish, salamanders, newts, axolotl…tests on genetic chimerae…dozens of clinical trials and a limited test release in Portland before we had to pull it.”

“Pull it?” Sandy tightened her grip in the revolver. “Not the sort of terminology you want to use with triggers, doc. Now tell me what you mean by pulling it.”

“We marketed it for about a week in high-end pharmacies under the name ‘RegenKit,'” Wiesenbaum said. “It looked like we were on the fast track to FDA approval, when the results from a last batch of tests came in. the board of directors ordered us to destroy all units and seal the research files rather than deal with the legal ramifications we’d uncovered.”

“You mean your ‘RegenKits’ were killing people,” Sandy hissed.

“Oh no, quite the opposite,” Wiesenbaum stammered. “We’d intended it for healing cuts, scrapes, bruises…but people were beginning to heal missing fingers and perhaps even limbs!”

“That sounds like a lie,” said Sandy. “If it were true, you’d have a line  of amputees a mile long out the door.”

“That’s what I thought. But the last test…there was an accident, and one of the subjects lost a fingertip in an industrial press. And then that call…that horrible call, from the board asking why we’d had a set of identical twins in the same experimental group.”

“Why did you?”

“That’s just it: we didn’t!”

 

July 1, 2011

From “Phantom Lands Across the River” by Jenny D. Falkner

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Jiméndez eventually tracked de Lóya’s party to a river that had been charted by Hernando de Soto a decade before the vanished expedition. The area was depopulated following a massive demographic collapse of the Mississippian culture caused by disease and the accompanying war and famine. Jiméndez located a group of survivors from de Lóya’s group in a small village along the river; they claimed that they had abandoned de Lóya, and spun a tale that Jiméndez chronicles faithfully in his diary, with his disbelieving and occasionally sarcastic comments confined to marginalia.

The survivors said that they had been warned against crossing the river by the natives, who claimed that when the moon and the sun were in the sky just so the land on the opposite bank became unfamiliar, a labyrinthine wilderness, and that to cross was to risk death. The villagers Jiméndez spoke with confirmed the legend but were unable to give particulars; the Mississippian collapse had led to the deaths of all their most learned elders, and they were on the verge of abandoning subsistence agriculture for a return to hunting and gathering. De Lóya had ridiculed the warnings and his party had crossed even though the elders insisted that to do so when the moon and stars were wrong was to invite death. He had reasoned that de Soto had encountered no such trouble, and a small scouting party sent out in advance had not either.

Trouble soon began. The scouting party could not recognize the lands they marched through, and deSoto’s maps and notes proved useless. They were unable to encounter the next river on the map despite marching for days in what must have been the right direction. Men who wandered away from the group failed to return. De Lóya insisted that the march continue, but one of his lieutenants had led a group in the opposite direction under cover of darkness. It had taken them five weeks–and their boots had been worn down to tatters, to say nothing of the seven men that starved–but they were able to emerge on the west bank of the river, they said, just as the last surviving elder proclaimed that the sun and moon were right again.

De Lóya has never been seen since.

 

June 17, 2011

From “The Mothball Armada” by Ken P. Oudermann

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“It’s true, it’s true!” Zigman said, arms flailing. “We’re just here to take pictures. This is a camera!”

“Put the weapon on the ground, now!” the uniform barked. “Hands on your head!”

“Let’s just…calm down,” I said. I slowly and deliberately unslung my camera and laid it on the deck, and then placed my hands on my head. “We came here to photograph the mothballed ships. We’ve been camping out in the battleship.”

“Don’t encourage them,” Zigman spat. “And you, G.I. Joe! Stop pointing that gun at me.”

“I don’t care why you’re here or who you’re selling those illegal photographs to,” the uniform said. “Tell your friend to place whatever the hell it is in his hands on the ground or the rifle that I’m pointing at him will be the least of his worries.”

“Zig, do what he says,” I hissed through gritted teeth. I could already see Wozinski and DeBeers following my example, putting their equipment down.

“Don’t call me that, and don’t tell me what to do! We’re here to document these relics of American aggression before they’re covered up. You’ve no right to stop us!”

“Susan’s Cape is a restricted area. You’re already going to be up on trespassing charges. Do you want to be up on being shot charges too, huh? They’ll make your next of kin pay the full cost of the bullet, and it ain’t cheap.”

I heard that scuttling noise again, this time behind the trio of uniforms in the mess door. This time, though, something was definitely moving in the shadows.

One of the uniforms, the one closest to the port side, yelped as something brushed across his shoulder. A minute later, the darkness swallowed him whole, with just echoes from spastic rifle burst to show he’d ever been there.

“I think we got more than we bargained for.”

 

May 28, 2011

From “The Snooze Button of Gotul” by Dewey R. Swanson

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Nevertheless, out of all the Great Cosmic Beings who ruled the earth in the Darkened Ages Past, it was Gotul who attracted the most interest. Gotul, He-Who-Sleeps-In-Darkness, was the primary Being mentioned in the ancient sources, and the one to which the various cults which tended to arise often devoted themselves.

In the old days, when the cultists vanished, it was ascribed to a variety of causes. Perhaps He-Who-Sleeps-In-Darkness had taken his faithful to the paradise of nonbeing where he was reputed to reside. Perhaps his wrath had been invoked and he had destroyed the flies that buzzed about him. Perhaps the cultists had found their supplications unanswered and had moved on to more lucrative yet still evil endeavors, such as law practice or civil service.

That ambiguity had the natural effect of encouraging another cult to sprout up, once collective memory had selectively forgotten the worst parts of the story and the occasional bloody torsos that remained behind. As such, when the latest Cult of Gotul arose in the 1970’s, its disappearance on March 23, 1976 was accompanied by a press release on behalf of Gotul issued by Featherby, Brooke & Whitmire:

“Please cease any and all attempts to contact, raise, or invoke Gotul, also known as He-Who-Sleeps-In-Darkness or Foremost-Among-Great-Cosmic-Beings. He is, as his name suggests, very sleepy and would prefer to remain asleep and unmolested in retirement. Those who disregard this warning do so at the risk of being subject to an automatic Ritual of Rending Annihilation. Gotul reminds would-be cultists that the reality of the Darkness would rend in twain the sanity of any mortal who beholds it, and suggests devotees find a less overwhelmingly fatal outlet for their spiritual energies.”

 

May 24, 2011

From “50° S 100° W” by Jeanette C. Delgado

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The men conferred. “Says her name is Sei Iwashi, but the prints match one Joanna Suzuki from the Bay Area.”

“An alias?”

“Makes sense considering the reports we had of illicit activity. Let’s give it a go.”

Reynolds and Melick entered the room again. Sei still nervously fingered the smoldering cigarette in her hand but seemed to have composed herself. “I heard what you were saying,” she muttered. “It’s a nickname, not an alias. It’s very funny if you speak both Norwegian and Japanese.”

Reynolds glanced at Melick. “I see,” he said. “Good to know. You feeling a bit more cooperative now?”

“It’s like I said when they brought me in,” said Sei, lighting a fresh coffin nail with the butt of another. “My team hired the boat out of San Francisco. We went out to test ultra-sensitive hydrophones and a custom-made deep-sea ROV we’d developed in association with the University of Baja California Sur and Pelagica Corporation. They underwrote it, but it was an entirely independent, private venture in international waters.”

Melick made a show of taking notes on his pad, even though Reynolds could see he was only tracing a series of loopy lines. “And how exactly were you going to test your headphones and robot slave?” he asked.

“Deficiencies in your terminology aside,” said Sei, “we were going to test them by searching for the source of the Bloop.”

Reynolds put on his bad-cop face. “Are you making fun of us, Ms. Iwashi-Suzuki-whatever? Because if you are, I strongly advise you to reconsider. You are here because we have universal jurisdiction in this matter, and we can hold you almost indefinitely as a pirate if we’ve a mind to.”

Sei glared at her interrogators. “It’s NOAA’s term, not mine. They detected an underwater sound in 1997, one so loud it could be heard clearly over 5000 klicks away, with hydrophones they installed to detect Soviet submarines. They traced it to about 50° S 100° W and took to calling it the Bloop, since that’s more or less what it sounds like. It’s been heard a few times since then, but NOAA and the Navy were never interested in investigating. It was an opportunity to test our equipment and maybe make the headlines, and we took it.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Reynolds said, still in bad-cop mode. “And you expect us to believe that poking around with a microphone and a robot led to the disappearance of your entire crew?”

 

May 9, 2011

From “Outbreak at SMU” by Kevin K. Neimayer

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“I’m in the hallway outside,” said Jordan. “I don’t see any more of those things.”

“Wonderful,” squawked Graves through the walkie-talkie. “Don’t you think you could have waited another forty seconds and simply come into the lab?”

“I wanted you to be expecting me.”

“I was already expecting you! Now stop babbling and cover the last fifteen point seven-two meters to your destination!”

Jordan gritted her teeth. “I told you before, Dr. Graves, I’m sick of your attitude.”

“And I told you before, Ms. Avery, that your feelings on the matter are strictly incidental. You should be grateful that I need a tool in accomplishing my ends; otherwise you’d have been left to rot with the rest of them.”

That was it, Jordan decided. When she met Graves, she was going to kick him directly in the stones. She’d had enough of his bossy, disembodied voice.

The lab door had been locked from the inside; it opened as she approached. Inside, she saw a walkie-talkie held in one of the lab’s manipulator arms, positioned next to a mainframe terminal speaker. Dr. Graves lay in a heap on the floor, with deep red marks around his neck.

“Surprise,” the terminal said.

 

April 29, 2011

From “Tumor’s Tenacity” by Callie Wellson Dowes

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“Dr. Corrie Smithson. A real pioneer in a lot of fields, especially cancer research.”

“She did a lot of work with immortal cell lines when the field was still fast and loose–back when they were basically stealing cells from cancer patients without their consent,” Dr. Mays said. “Way I remember it, Dr. Smithson’s wrote that postdoctoral thesis on the genetic markers in immortal cell line conteminants…using blood she drew from the original subject’s family without a consent form. She was only able to keep that act up so long before the laws caught up.”

Annette nodded, making a note on her pad. “What happened after that?”

“She still worked with immortal cell lines, mostly ones that were grandfathered in. Spent a lot of time working with animal cells that were similar–canine transmissible venereal tumors, Tasmanian devil facial tumor disease, Syrian hamster reticulum cell sarcoma.” Dr. Mays sounded wistful as he spoke.

“I’m…sorry?” Annette said, unsure what he was talking about.

“Oh. Those are all naturally occurring immortal cell lines, which have manifested as transmissible diseases. But the critters didn’t need to sign consent forms, you see. Dr. Smithson pretty much wrote the book on transmissible, immortal cancers.”

“That sounds…well, terrifying.”

“Don’t worry,” Dr. Mays laughed. “They’re quite rare.”

“What happened to her?”

“Terrible story. Lymphoma. The girl spent her entire life researching ways to cure it, and she died of a particularly aggressive strain. Interestingly enough, she took samples from her own tumors and bred an immortal line of research cells from it–they’re now the second-most used immortal cell line in medicine and responsible for half of all laboratory contaminations!”

 

March 25, 2011

From “Séminaire Denty” by Gustav Adolph Mimieux

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And so he founded the Séminaire Denty, on the Ile de Denty, where it grew and flourished for a hundred years.

But then came the fires of 1789 and the whirlwind of 18 Brumaire, and the Séminaire Denty found itself closed, looted, and all but forgotten. It was manned as a coastal fort during the wars that followed, only to gradually fall into ruin thereafter. Dark rumors circulated of priests or the illegitimate descendants of priests stalking the wooded ruins, but nothing substantial ever came of them, save the disappearance of a German patrol to the area in 1944 which was blamed on partisans of the Resistance.

So when Dr. Pierre Coutard arrived at the site, he found only two hundred years of decay. Nothing to indicate the site’s former importance.

And nothing to indicate its fate only six weeks hence.

 

December 26, 2010

From “The Dunink Places” by Lynwood Gilbert

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She spoke of the Dunink places, parts of the world that had unusual resonance with what she called “the world unseen.” Dr. Bausch felt that these were delusions based on tortured and twisted reinterpretations of events in Milly’s life; for example, she had been troubled by a bully by that name in childhood, and her brother confirmed that, before his early death from cancer, Milly’s father had regaled his children with tales of strange and beautiful things beyond the ken of mankind.

John agreed with Bausch for the most part, but there were some places where things didn’t quite fit. The bully, for instance, had spelled his name “Dunninc” but Milly had become hysterical when John suggested that she use that spelling for her Dunink places.

“The words have power, and by breaking them you unleash it!”

Then there was the detailed list of Dunink places that Milly drew up. The Belcher ribbon islands in Hudson bay, Kerguelen in the south Indian Ocean, Severnaya Zemlya in the arctic…John needed to consult a good atlas to find any of them. It didn’t seem in keeping with Milly, who had no books and had reportedly been a mediocre student before her psychotic break, more concerned with gowns than geology. She had even identified one Dunink place not by name but by number, scratching out 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W longitude 48.8767°S latitude. It took a trip to the local library to determine what she meant by this: the coordinates were for Point Nemo, the furthest place from dry land in all Earth’s oceans.

 

December 16, 2010

From “Templar’s Doom” by Mason G. Effingham

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“What’s taking so long?” Strasser barked. Her knuckles were white around the pickaxe in her hands.

“Can you do this?” Donnor snapped back. “Do you know how to read Old High German? Spelling was fast and loose back then, and handwriting wasn’t exactly high on the legibility scale either!”

“Read it as you decipher it, then,” said Strasser, her tone unmollified. “What have you got so far?”

A band of knights on crusade did this way come, separated from their fellows in a strange and hostile land.

They were set upon by enemies until only half the party remained. They took refuge in this cave, where their enemies dared not pursue.

Soon it was learned why, as one by one dark forces took ahold of the once-pious knights and drove them into a frenzy of helpless bloodlust, attacking their fellows until they were slain.

Their leader fell victim, trying to slaughter his men even as he cried at them to beware.

He begged the Templar knight Gelanier to end his life.

Gelanier obliged.

 

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