This issue marks Ibn Qirtaiba's third anniversary of publication on the Web. Three years ago issues 1 to 9, which had originally been published in hard copy, were converted to HTML and Ibn Qirtaiba became one of the first science fiction fanzines to venture into the new medium of the Web. Issue 10 - the first issue to be published exclusively on the Web - followed a few months later, and... well, the rest is history.
This issue we feature short stories from two new contributors to the magazine, Anthony MacFarland and Steven Zellers (if you enjoy Steven's contribution you can find more at his Web site). Fred Noweck branches out from his usual book reviews to provide a review of the disaster movie of the year, Deep Impact. W Gregory Stewart also contributes something a little out-of-the-ordinary; ghost circuit (which originally appeared in Ice River) is a form of poetry described as a word mural, for reasons that are readily apparent.
If you enjoy what you read in this issue, remember that your own contributions are always more than welcome.
Short story: A Million Times by
Anthony Lee MacFarland Movie
review: Deep Impact by Fred Noweck
Fishy, fishy in a brook
Daddy's caught you in a loop
Amber thought she heard her father. She did; Daddy was drunk again.
She heard him scream louder this time. Whenever Daddy got this way, his yelling into the house meant he was looking for her, no matter where she hid, Daddy would find her and drag her back into that awful dark den.
This time her fear was unbearable and sobbing had made her chest hurt. She had to go to him or risk to be dragged by her hair again. Her legs were still bruised from banging into the corners of the walls yesterday. She had screamed and cried for him to stop hurting her.
But this time would be different; she could stop the "hurting".
She held the gun tightly in her hands that she had found in the kitchen drawer where her father had hid it under a some folded dish rags. She moved slowly down the hall toward his shadowy image and she could hear the white noise from the imacon tube. He was sitting in his chair mumbling to himself and telling her to hurry up.
When she reached the doorway, she raised the gun and pointed it directly at the silhouette of his head. She couldn't see his eyes and that made it easier to do what she had to do. She couldn't hold back the swells of tears that blurred her vision. He asked her what she was doing.
Amber let the anger lash out like thunder and white lightning and she no longer heard the dead channel on the imacon tube. The pounding against her chest and head had made her dizzy and nauseous. Her small legs gave out and the darkness that enveloped her, spun her downwards to the hardwood floor. She closed her eyes for the first time in years.
"Amber?" said a tall man in a full length white jumper suit, swabbed for warmth in a Redskin bomber.
Carvin, her Leader Drive Tech, had surprised her by trying to get her attention by saying her first name. She didn't mind him calling her by her first name, it was shorter than Doctor Kinneson.
He resumed by telling her how extremely sorry he was for being tardy, but didn't say why he was late, but assured Amber it would never happen again. She rolled her eyes because she heard that line from him a million times.
"You spilled something!" he said looking at the wet floor under her desk console. She paid no attention to what he said and continued feeding data into the main frame by remote panel and keystroke.
She was a bit angry with Carvin for not turning off the Parallex unit last night, more so than him being late again. She watched him hastily throw off his bomber and take his place at his own work console. He began the morning re-checking the Leader Drive. Her soon-to-be infamous time travel device.
Her anger turned to rushed intensity because she had promised to give a thorough report to the Director in a few hours at a luncheon. Her migraine came back worse for the lack of her morning caffeine. She then realized her new red velvet shoes were soaked in her coffee. She cursed at the wet floor.
Amber called up the mainframe readout to check her conclusives against yesterday's data. She was very relieved that the DNA material of the blue-green algae she had sent back in time was fully retrievable. The DNA mutation numbers were negligible. She sighed in relief because the possibility of non-destructive time travel for living organisms was very possible. She smiled to herself. One day we'll be able to send larger organisms through, she thought to herself.
Amber looked through the glass, through her long red strands of hair, she noticed Carvin was peeking over the Leader Drive at the glass wall in front of her. He's looking at my legs again she thought. A ritual that he seemed to enjoy. She looked downward and noticed her white overcoat was sufficient in veiling her long artificially tanned legs. "This guy's an idiot," she thought to herself, suppressing the urge to let him know up front. She despised all men in general, especially the ones that showed interest in her.
"Please, make sure you shut off the Parallex before you leave today, you forgot to do it last night!" she said without emotion into the control com.
"I'm sure I did?" said Carvin with a confused look.
"No you didn't, and anyway, we'll recall the specimens tomorrow, I have a strong feeling that they're okay. I got a few things to take care of at admin, I'll see you tomorrow!" said Amber getting up to leave the control room, she stopped herself and walked back to the containment room entrance door where Carvin was, "Do me a favor, run a Crystavex matrix recall too and put that on my desk before the morning!" she ordered him and left.
Carvin had watched her leave and he cursed her long white overcoat. He decided that the Leader Drive was in top form and that he needed to visit his football buddy in operations. Carvin set the recall to print but did not shut off the Parallex as Doctor Amber Kinneson prescribed. He picked up a telbox;
"Hey Gerry, how about an early lunch and bring those Redskin tickets!"
The Helmsdale Rose apartments were day-glo pink. Even at night they could be seen from the beltway through the towering pines. Virginia was beautiful, and snow-laden this time of year. Amber loudly relayed to her E-celled cruiser that the city road managers for the tri-state area were morons for not researching new business growth trends.
"Fairfax, Virginia does not have enough roads to support all these goddamn cars!"
Her Nissan Turbotrek got the point.
It had taken ninety-six minutes for Amber to cover twenty-eight miles through the slush and drizzle. She didn't need the heat on because her own frustration had boiled her blood pressure to keep her actively beating on the steering wheel. She had somehow survived the beltway again without causing herself a heartache.
Harmony greeted her at the door and shook her bushy tail upward like a reverse orange-striped waterfall. Amber stamped her feet and whispered her kiddy sweet nothings to the pompous Persian that meowed annoyingly out of starvation. Amber picked her up and ported her to the kitchen area.
"Well hello purrmeister!" Amber said in a silly little girl voice. Amber rummaged through the fridge and located the potted dark-brown smudge called Whiskies.
"How can she eat this crap?" she said it to herself and the cat.
She eked at the open smelly can of liver morsels and chunky tuna blend.
"There you go harmony!"
Her living room was quite barren except for a few Demarques on the walls and a white hand-crafted leather sofa that she picked up from the Post classifieds. Her dining room shared the same space as her living room area and that didn't bother her at all. One small feline and one human being didn't require much for shelter she had once told the rental agent.
In the center of the room was a slab of glass balanced on two metal pylons that she had coined the overly efficient mag rack. Time-Yushido, Elle-Vanguard, New Digi-guide, and a few dozen science journals were fanned out nicely for no one to read but herself. She never had visitors and never planned for any. Her home was kept clean and tidy for herself and the purrmeister.
She leaned back onto the sofa exhaling the sound of relief. The long and cold drive still annoyed her but she had other things to accomplish later tonight. She looked up at the ceiling and noticed the Victorian-styled glass light bulb coverings over the dining room table. She began to stare at it and her mind drifted.
A chill ran down her spine and her breathing stopped.
The darkness was creeping back into her mind and she took a deep breath and opened her eyes wide to avoid it. She thought of the shower routine and got up quickly for the bedroom. Harmony followed her for the millionth time.
The shower was soothing and the bed was hard. She had replaced her waterbed a few days ago when the management told her that she couldn't have a waterbed on the upper floors. Two years and they had finally noticed? But the hard bed wasn't that bad, in fact, it helped her regain a better posturing in such a short time? Remarkable bed, she thought.
She sat with stylus and pad and the ink became teasing and unproductive. She decided that her report could wait till she had the matrix recall data in hand.
She smiled to herself not thinking that she had sent blue-green algae to an alternate time zone, but that she had sent them back to where they had originated; unharmed.
Her Leader molecules had accomplished their tasks superbly by insuring the transferred specimens had a blueprint to affix themselves, and that the specimens were corrected for excessive mutations. Tomorrow's matrix recall report should support her claim and exactly reveal negligible mutation numbers.
The only problem she was facing, she was borrowing.
Was it right to interfere with an another time zone's molecule resources to complete her experiments? Is it right to borrow molecules on any organism level? Would future developments lead to catastrophic events in the chain of bio-organism development? She had asked these questions a million times to herself and somehow justified in her mind that it wouldn't be catastrophic.
It was not like she was borrowing human molecules, only molecules from extremely lower organisms, from a whole different time zone. What other scientists do in the near future, she would hope that they would be sensitive to the dire possibilities. She was confident that non-destructive time travel of organisms is now within reach and so was the Nobel Prize. That's what really mattered in the here and now.
But her father had told her differently.
In that reflective moment in her bedroom, the darkness came swift. Amber was overwhelmed by it and she was catapulted out of her bedroom into the dark hallway of her childhood. The only light source was the white flutter from the imacon screen emanating from the end of the hallway. That's where the dark den was.
Daddy was crying again and stopped working on his scientific papers. The same papers that his mother and her father had worked on so hard together before she died in an accidental experiment at her father's lab.
Amber hated to see her daddy cry because it made her cry. She felt his loneliness and pain because hers was the same pain. Momma was gone and had left them alone together.
That's when daddy changed.
He began to drink, and he drank a lot. He stopped working on the papers that were so important to him and her mother. She watched him throw them in the trash and curse them over and over. He blamed them for her mother's death.
One night when he drank himself to asleep. Amber snuck into the den and pulled the papers out of the trash and hid them in her bedroom. She knew why she took them, because she knew what her mother had said, "our work is very important Amber, it will help the world". Momma was always right because she always showed Amber how much she loved her. Anything her mother did was always perfect to her. She missed her so much.
One evening, Amber's father had stumbled into her room, banging into things, which woke her up. She lied motionless and awake; listening. He sat next to her on the bed and turned the night stand light on and stroked her long red hair. He bent over to smell her hair and that made Amber's heart beat fast.
She heard him tell her that she smelled like momma and that they could be happy again if she would wake up and hold him close. Amber could not move out of fear and kept trying not to hear him. But he rolled her over and she looked up at him with glassy green eyes. He told her that she had momma's eyes. His heaviness upon her little body had made it difficult for her to breathe, his breath and spit reeked with alcohol and he said terrible things.
"You will never amount to anything without me... I created you and you belong to me. Don't ever think of running out on me... I will always find you... you belong to me... forever!"
Amber despised the morning.
Besides the blinding sun streaming through the broken blinds, her alarm blared a distorted Melissa Etheridge from her favorite oldies station.
The bad dream had gone away.
Her pillow was still wet from the tears she had cried last night and struggled to get the over-sized T-shirt over her head. She took a deep breath and recalled the data results of the ITEC control room yesterday. She smiled and saw her cat waking from its own slumber.
Harmony was by the sliding doors of the bedroom balcony, lying between the tracks of the cross-country ski machine, yawning and peering at her through slant-beaded feline eyes.
"I knew it, non-destructive, the Leader molecules did their job!" shot out Amber with a big grin. She leafed throughout the matrix recall printouts and pointed the conclusives to her OPS director.
He was an elderly, balding fat type with rosy cheeks and hairless forehead. He carried a heavy scent from the Gold Habana he burned in the chilly morning air earlier. Amber disliked smokers since she patched it a few years back. But Director Gorman was an exception. He was another patron of her work but paid her in bear hugs and corporate luncheons. He suffocated her again and that brought her slight discomfort judging by the rolling of her eyes to the back of her heard. "This is wonderful Amber! Do you know what this means? Your name will be next to the greatest of names; Einstein, Hawkings, Greirman and Helmksy. You must bring your data results with you to the luncheon today!"
Director Gorman was beyond excitement because he inadvertently knocked his hair-piece slightly back with his jolly hailing. Amber giggled to herself and promised him that she would attend the luncheon this afternoon. She forgot to tell him that he was about to tell the world that he was bald.
She returned to the control room and Carvin wasn't around. She had suspected this much from him. She lost count of the times that he was late for work. Always coming in hung-over and pathetically apologizing. Men, she thought. Drunks.
She sat at her control desk and noticed a red light on the mainframe panel was still lit.
"Damnit! Car- forgot to shut down the Parallex!"
She was so angry when she rose up that she didn't notice that she knocked over her coffee onto the control room floor. Her main concern was for the neural axis contained in the Parallex chamber that was connected to the Leader Drive.
The silicon-based linings in the Parallex chamber was contaminant-sensitive and that is where the neural axis was located. If the neural axis was destroyed, all the data could be lost. On top of that, replacing the neural axis was only a mere eighty million dollars; she could hear the luncheon transforming into a lynching.
Amber entered into the containment room that plat-formed the Leader Drive. There was a slight hum coming from the black-coated differential panels. That's where the Parallex was located and the switch mounting should be behind it. She reached over the panels and her fingers found the circular switch. The hum went away.
She sat down in Carvin's swivel chair and spun herself to tap into Carvin's Network computer. She pulled up the Parallex diagnostic page and ran the program. A familiar dialog box appeared: "Do you wish to install the Parallex program?"; Hit escape to discontinue.
This wasn't right to Amber and her mind raced for answers. Her heart began to pound furiously, and quizzed herself what this dialog box was asking of her? Why would it now ask her to install the Parallex program? Didn't she just see it on the file menu? Didn't she install this yesterday? She got up and went into the control room to call on the main frame's program's status page. The Parallex unit appeared not to be installed.
"Great!" she said angrily to herself.
She re-installed the Parallex program and ran it. Everything looked as it should've looked. The red light was off and the Parallex diagnostics ran smoothly as she hoped. Great, she thought, there was no contamination and everything appeared to be in order again.
On her desk was the picture of her mother, her gold-reddish hair and green eyes were like her own. She still loved her very much and knew she would be proud of her for what she has accomplished. She owed it all to... then she thought she heard her father calling out her name. "Amber?" said a tall man in a full length white jumper suit, swabbed for warmth in a Redskin bomber.
Carvin, her Leader Drive Tech, had surprised her by trying to get her attention by saying her first name. She didn't mind him calling her by her first name, it was shorter than Doctor Kinneson.
He resumed by telling her how extremely sorry he was for being tardy, but didn't say why he was late, but assured Amber it would never happen again. She rolled her eyes because she heard that line from him a million times.
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Deep Impact - this summer's
disaster movie, has a comet the size of New York City (well, Long Island anyway) on a
collision course with Earth. If it isn't stopped, it will wipe out most life on the
planet. The President (Morgan Freeman), working with the Russians, has had constructed a
spacecraft to intercept the comet and blow it apart with nuclear weapons. At the same
time, hedging his bets, he has constructed giant underground shelters in which one million
people will be able to live for two years until the worst of the effects are over.
The movie is, scientifically, not very accurate. Neither do the actions of the characters conform with known human behavior.
Now, aside from Newtonian mechanics (which were, for the most part, ignored), the script calls for the astronauts to bury several nuclear devices 100 meters below the surface of the comet (which is 7 1/2 miles long). Of course, they only crack it in two without altering the trajectory. If I were doing it, I would try to halt its rotation and then, using the nuclear motors of the spacecraft, use the next five months to push it on a course into the sun. But then we wouldn't have the movie we got.
There were scenes of personal sacrifice, heroism, and the flipside - profiteering and looting. There is a spectacular scene of the destruction of New York City by tidal wave which, all by itself, is worth going to see. Personally, I wouldn't have waited that long to leave the coast. Once you see the water receding really fast, it's too late to do more than to put your head between your legs and kiss... well... you know.
My rating? Three stars.
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They came on a moonless Summer night while the world slept, speeding one by one, silently across a star spangled sky leaving golden streaks that will be forever embedded in my mind. I saw them first. Then Mom saw my face and followed my upward gaze. I'll never forget the sound she made, half scream, half shudder. That sound alone brought me to the realization that our lives would never be the same. Not for me. Not for Mom. Not for the kids at school. Not for anyone. She held me close as we watched from the hallway window. I could feel her shaking.
"What are they Mom?"
"Death." She whispered.
"Death?"
"I'm sorry it worked out this way Tinman."
Those were the last words Mom ever spoke to me. I could feel the wetness on her face as the first one exploded. She pushed the basement door open and threw me into the darkness below. Pain seared through me as I tumbled down the steps and for just a moment there was a blinding light above. Then blackness.
The feint smell of Mom's perfume perforated the darkness. I opened my eyes amazed to see sunlight streaming through what used to be the basement door.
"Mom?"
No answer.
I knew in an instant that Mom was gone. Her perfume still lingered from when she'd held me. I tried to stand but was rudely reminded of my fall down the steps. After several attempts I concluded that nothing was broken but I was covered with bruises and burns.
"Mom?!" I yelled again.
No answer.
The pain of my injuries paled next to the pain of my loss for Mom. She was right. Death had come. It took her but had cruelly forgotten me. I cried then slept. Slept then cried. Three times the sun came followed by darkness. Even worse than the darkness was the silence. Which was then followed the worst pain of all. Hunger. Hunger has a way making people brave. I looked up the charred steps at the fading sunlight and gathered my courage.
Global Thermal Nuclear Warfare is the technical name for what happened. But for a twelve year old kid who finds himself standing in the shell of his home staring at his Mom's scorched skeleton, there are no words.
I thought I'd prepared myself for what I might find at the top of the steps, I was wrong. Once again I cried for the loss all I'd ever known. I cried until the hunger commanded me to my feet to face what was left of this empty meaningless world.
I found myself walking slowly along what used to be Interstate 95. Where I was going I didn't know. I don't think I cared. Occasionally I would pass a burned out car with blackened corpses staring out at me but mostly there was just ashes and soot where once green trees and grass had grown.
Mom's words echoed in my mind over and over with each agonizing step.
"What are they Mom?"
"Death."
Death. I stopped to listen. Not a sound. Not a bird in the sky or even the buzz of a mosquito. Nothing. Dead silence. Death.
By the grace of God or maybe by his wrath, I survived the nuclear holocaust of 1999. I travelled alone for months eating cold food from cans I found in the trunk of a burned out car or an ancient forgotten supermarket that had withstood the explosions. Each time I entered I hoped that I'd find someone else alive and each time I found the same thing. Death. People or what used to be people lay in a macrobe pile in the isles or clumped together at the checkout line with stacks of soiled green paper in their hands waiting for all eternity to pay for their groceries.
"Will that be paper or plastic?"
"Paper will do just fine thank you."
As I left I would always give a courteous smile and a polite wave. It was the same in every building in every town. Countless nameless bodies stopped dead in their tracks. I knew that each pile of scorched rotten flesh was once a person with a name. A life. Brothers and sisters. Moms and Dads. Wives, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, hopes, dreams, ambitions. All of them silently shouted the same question to me. Why? I wished I knew.
"I don't know!!"
No matter how many times I shouted it they were never happy.
"Why? Why? Why?"
Every time I went into a building for food I found myself running out screaming at them to leave me alone. It wasn't my fault that they died and I didn't. But they didn't care. They just stayed where they were. Waiting for me to come in for food so they could ask me again. Why?
I decided that I was going to find the answer for them. Where should I go? Washington?
Yes. I would go to Washington.
I changed my direction and headed North and East. For the first time since the bombs exploded I had a purpose. I had a reason to live. At first I tried to find someone else alive. Anyone. But as the months passed I realized that was not going to happen. Now only one question burned in my mind. Why?
Why did this happen? I had to find out. For me. For them. As I travelled I noticed they didn't scream at me any more. Instead they seemed to be smiling with their shapeless faces. They knew I was going to try to find the answer. They watched me with their hollow eyes and cheered me on.
"Go Tinman. Hurry. We want to know what happened. We want our lives to mean something. We want to live even if only through your eyes. Help us Tinman."
On a sunny spring day I dropped my backpack on the White House lawn and stared for a long moment at the crumbling building. It had taken me two months to get to this place where the man who pushed the button lived. The President.
I couldn't wait any longer. I ran as fast as I could and climbed the White House steps two at a time. When I pushed on the huge front door it let out an eerie moan to welcome me. The two secret service agents with machine guns in their hands met me at the door.
"Come on in Tinman." They said. "We've been expecting you."
I walked right past them and searched each room until I found the one I was looking for. A large wood stained door had a dusty plaque on it that read, "Oval Office." I didn't hesitate. I went inside.
"Hello Mr. President." I said.
"Hello Tinman."
"What can I do for you?"
"You can tell me why you killed everyone Mr. President."
The president stared at me for a long moment with his dead hollow eyes.
"Well Tinman. It wasn't an easy choice. You see Suddam Hussan had secretly made allies of Russia and China and was going to take over the world. It was either us or them."
"So you decided to kill everyone?"
"I'm sorry it worked out this way Tinman."
My heart jumped up in my throat. Those were Mom's words. How could he? How dare he?
I took my gun out and aimed it at the President's skull. I wanted to shoot and watch his head explode but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I slowly reached over the huge desk and took the President's crumbling hand off the red button. I gave him one last look and turned to walk away.
"And the children shall inherit the Earth." The corpse said.
I turned and looked at the man in disbelief. "Wrong Mr. President. There's none left."
"It was a mistake." He whispered.
I didn't bother to answer. Instead I walked out past the two piles of muck that were once Secret Service agents and stood at the top of the steps. I felt the cold steel of the gun still in my hand and tasted the carbon on my lips. I never felt the bullet enter my brain as I tumbled down the steps. I thought for a moment I saw a blinding light then the blackness swallowed me.
A hundred or maybe a thousand years later I stood with my Mom and watched out the hallway window while she held me close.
"What are they Mom?"
"Life." She answered. I could feel her shaking.
They came on a moonless Summer night blazing across a star spangled sky then slowly landed their space ships one by one.
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As the weather gets hotter, here in Georgia, I find myself wishing that I lived further North. I'm kind of disappointed that no one is writing to me (sob!) but I can bear up under it.
This month we have:
It's not very often that a dentist (or oral
surgeon) is the hero of a sci-fi adventure but in Prostho Plus, Anthony manages it.
Dr. Dillingham finds an alien in his examining chair. After determining the problem with
the alien's teeth (they use them to communicate with, by biting down on rods which take an
impression like cuneiform writing), he makes some gold crowns and then tries to escape.
The aliens, not wanting to lose his services, kidnap him. All of this in the first
chapter, which appeared somewhere (Analog, I think) as a short story.
Throughout the rest of the book, he does restorative dentistry on (among others) an alien so large that the cavity in one tooth alone takes more than 100 cubic feet of gold to fill, a war-robot that takes it into its programming that it must kill the doctor and chases him through the rest of the book, and intelligent rocks!
A fast read, you don't have to think much to follow the action, and with the puzzle of how to treat aliens he's never seen before. I liked it, you probably will, also.
Masters of the Fist reads like a
series of short stories fitted together chronologically into one book. The
"disaster" that ended civilization (never satisfactorily explained) has rendered
most human males sterile. Master Sergeant Patrick O'Meara, late of the British Army, is
not. When he tendered his resignation from the Army (rather informally, I don't think that
he told his superiors that he was leaving), he appropriated a battle-tank, fully armed. He
settled in the town of Barley Cross and, since he wasn't sterile, became Lord and Master,
exercising the "droit du seigneur", the right of the master to the bride's first
night. This ensured that Barley Cross, at least, would have children when no one else did.
(The Fist in the title is an old fortress that the town grew around) The years pass and
one of his sons shows that he is fertile. So, after O'Meara dies, a will is written up
(yes, after) naming the lad as the new Master of the Fist.
An interesting story and I, for one, would like to see more in that universe.
Phule's Company. I mean, really! The
title says it all! First in a new series by the author that brought us the Myth books
and Thieves World, it is the story of Captain Willard Phule, mega-millionaire,
whose career began with his court-martial. It is narrated by Beeker, Phule's
butler.
Take the worst rejects of the military establishment, add an unconventional commander, and stir vigorously... the result is hilarious!
Phule's Paradise is the second in the series, but I haven't noticed a third yet. Keep watching this space....
You know that a were-wolf in wolf form is
much larger and stronger than an ordinary wolf, don't you? Well, what do you suppose a wolf
who's been bitten by a were-wolf would look like? That's right. The wolf in this story is
built like the Terminator when he is a were-human and he's Howling Mad at what was
done to him. A ferociously funny story, it follows the trials and tribulations of
"Joshua"; as he tries to piece his life back together after being attacked by a
were-wolf and then captured and taken to the Zoo in New York. The first time that the full
moon rose over his cage, New York was treated to the sight of a Schwarzenegger clone
wandering around naked through the streets, wondering what the H. was going on... as far
as the wolf was concerned, it went downhill from there.
Entertaining and funny, I would like to see a sequel to this one. Maybe if we all wrote to Peter David....
That's it for now. Send your letters and comments - or even if you have a question - to: Freddy47@aol.com or to Fred@sf.sig.au.mensa.org or snail-mail to P.O.Box 30245, Savannah, Georgia 31410. All letters of interest will be answered in this column.
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sunspot
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Dive, dive..
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The check is in the mail. Repeat -
the check is in the mail.