Posted December, 2024
Single Touch
by Timothy Heins
If there was a way you could understand me, even a little, I think you might agree mine is the saddest story that could ever be. But you are different. You seem to have capabilities beyond my ability to experience. A form that exists in the third dimension with an ability to manipulate other forms. Yet despite this amazing ability, a barrier of sorts around your comprehension bars you from so much that is otherwise knowable. Dimensions you cannot sense, either because of the barrier or because your form distracts you, blocking your ability to see.
Most new life forms have no concept of how they came to be. But before I could learn a single word of any language, before my host of siblings and I were freed from my mother’s cocoon, her memory of the event filtered into our minds. She’d been crawling along the edges of a singularity when she came across a strange bit of life. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Wrapping her limbs around it she squeezed until the creature implanted all my kind inside her. It was unexpected and terrifying, and she killed him for it. Immediately she mourned with terrible remorse and prayed that her children would be as beautiful as their father. We resembled neither of them and she turned from us the day we emerged.
Her action had consequences she must carry through the eons. We were the lives that emerged, without physical form yet unique in our own way. We reproduce randomly and rarely according to other compatible life forms. The revulsion our mother experienced at our birth was imbedded such that we will endure no contact with another of our own kind. Most of us suffer the pain of knowing our unwanted offspring will share our unhappy existence.
Long ago we left our mother clinging to the rim of that one singularity, hoping another of our father’s kind may venture through from the other side.
We cross many universes, visiting many cultures. The lives we invade struggle to define us. We enter our hosts when circumstances and events generate the blend of physiological reactions tuned to our own, unique rhythms. On the heels of some unhappy event, one of your kind takes a breath and we are drawn in like dust in a vacuum where we remain until you release us.
Many of my brothers and sisters like to toy with their hosts, lingering close in the air that they might take advantage of the slightest catalyst. One of your kind taunts another with belittling words unaware of the opening you give to my brother, who rides the stream of indignance through the nostrils of the offended party. Retaliation multiplies as the humans exert their animosity. Joined by jealousy, revenge or even spite, my brothers and sisters thrive in your culture. It’s not as though we enjoy such prosperity. Most of us would welcome an eternal sleep. I dread my encounters with those among you who have taken a monogamous companion. Divisions and disagreements arise too often and when my sisters and brothers hover near, you do your utmost to hurt each other. Those emotions pull us along like a twig floating helplessly along on a river.
Few of my kind seek to grow. Some delight in their work. Others seek out distractions, diversions and other entertainments as they wreak havoc on unsuspecting worlds. I hope in vain that I may never again invade another life. Your experiences are far greater than anything I may ever know and some are more than I can endure. If I could have a single wish, I would like to know the physical touch of a caring friend or lover offering comfort. Or even to know the feel of a tear sliding down a cheek. Even the pain of torture endured by the one so many of you revere, hanging on a wooden support, pierced by bits of metal and thorns, crying out and dying would be a memory I could cherish through eons ahead. But I have no form suited to such experiences.
Posted November, 2024
by Timothy Heins
A Martian’s Chronicle
The Fisc 3 neurocular disrupter was essentially the same weapon first developed for the Karnik Revolution in the 2340’s. Small enough to fit in the palm of a child’s hand it had a universal connector that could interface with any data terminal. Buy one today and it would be indistinguishable from the weapon used by Toumar Torin to rescue a noblewoman and spark a war.
Directed at an individual’s ocular enhancer, the device triggers electrical pulses through the central nervous system. A low setting might cause temporary paralysis. Higher settings could generate unspeakable pain, cause permanent paralysis or both. From where I stood I couldn’t read the command console, but my image stood sharp and clear in the center of the security monitor.
Seated behind the sleek, smoked-polymer desk a diminutive sentry stared at me through a pair of deep blue orbs. Spice addiction. Instinctively my right hand shot up in a sign of surrender and I stood still through the longest two minutes of my life. Yet while I made my best imitation of a tree, the guard remained statuesque. Edging closer I gradually came to believe he was already dead. Only when I had moved into position to see the central monitor did I realize the gut-wrenching truth. He wasn’t wielding the weapon. He was its victim. Paralysis and pain – the full package. A tube fed spice into his bloodstream, sustaining life indefinitely. A time stamp on the monitor told me he’d been here for months. He wore the jacket of a law official. Sheriff Tillery. I knew the man by reputation. Most would say he deserved his fate, but they weren’t looking at it up close and dirty. With a small pocketknife I cut the cord feeding his body and thought of a passage from the ancient book of Romans. Something about doing the very thing I do not want.
I spotted the second victim on the floor behind Tillery. A pair of tendrils strung through his long, braided hair told me he was a telepath, but no message appeared in my mind. This time I cut the lifeline with sadness and regret. But I knew those feelings would pass, and sooner than they should.
On the wall to my right a light began flashing. Words on the monitor blinked asynchronously, “NO GROWTH.” Epilepsy is not an ailment of Martian physiology but a migraine would knock me out for a week. The red strobe was a made-to-order headache. I moved on.
Paintings lined the walls of the cavernous corridor telling the story of a great war. Armies of goblins, dwarves and elves battled each other under the shadow of a dark figure adorned with bright, golden rings. At the far end of the passage I found a second small chamber filled with stolen goods. Three mechanical figures loaded bags of white powder onto a transport ship most certainly bound for earth. Between us stood the thief who once passed himself off as my friend. The one who framed me for treason before marrying my childhood sweetheart.
Set to kill I leveled my phaser and spoke in a loud voice, “Fourteen years in a Martian prison and all I thought about was this moment.”
“Dantes,” he muttered as he turned to face me. I hoped his last thought was knowledge of who it was that ended his life. A dish served cold, I thought.
After instructing the robots to stop working and contact the authorities, one designated Maddie asked how I knew they wouldn’t kill me out of loyalty to their former master. “Elementary deduction,” I replied. “You are all USRMM models. That means you are programmed with three laws, two of which now work in my favor.”