Example story:

The Quiet Rebellion

By:

N.J. Kailhofer

The strings on the banjo vibrated with their slow, silent call.

The room twirled and stomping boots shook the floor, but Jack sat still on his place of honor, watching. The clan's eyes were alive with joy, their faces awash with merriment. Some wore beaming smiles, while others mouthed open secrets about him, the only killer in the room.

There was no turning back now. The load would not return to the shell.

The clan would bandy words back and forth about their good fortune and how he had to be the one foretold, but they did not understand. Baldwin's own would come, and none of them would survive like this.

Tea parties. Socials.

Baldwin ruined them all, with his guns and rough chains. None were alive now that lived before they came. None of the clan even remembered freedom.

Killing Baldwin was easy. Any of them could have done it.

The man before him halted in place, and then stepped to the side. Jack's eyes darted about the room. They were all staring at him. The strings on the banjo were still.

In front of him, the room reformed into two rows from where he sat up to the most glorious vision he had ever seen--Marianne Greenbush. Her white dress was a wide hoop skirt with ruffles that hid her shoes from sight. Through some dressmaking magic, her waist was extra narrow. A wide lace collar hid most of her chest, hinting at the ample bosom that had to be straining at such fabric. Short sleeves revealed thin arms that trailed to white lace gloves. His nose brought him a faint, tantalizing scent that he only smelled when Marianne was near. It was like the lilac bushes Baldwin's people planted, the only pleasant odor they brought with them.

He loved it.

The sight of her flushed blood to his cheeks, as it always had. Her hair cascaded down in long curls along the sides of her face. He longed to caress that angelic vision. He knew her skin was soft and smooth like all the women wanted theirs to be, but never was. Hard work and hard life prevented it, but not so for Marianne. Baldwin favored her, kept her from toil so that she could become the woman he wanted.

Baldwin! The thought of him welled up rage inside Jack. Missionary to the New South. That was how he and his kind presented themselves. They pretended they were going to help the clan--rebuild the valley after the war, and start a new future. Instead, they took everything and called it their own.

Jack glanced around the room at every soul dressed in "Northern" style. Trousers, cutaway coats, and tall collars were everywhere. They powdered themselves with foul-smelling concoctions and smoked pipes filled with the new tobacco. The stench of it turned his stomach. Baldwin forbade them all the clothes of their homeland, the long robes and bright colors. He gave them new names, new homes, new work, and all of it was just to make him rich.

A hand touched Jack's knee. It was Harry.

Harry and Jack had a secret language since they were boys, one of movements.

"She speak you," Harry gestured.

Marianne stood before him, and without his mind even willing it, he found himself on his feet.

"Jack," she related through Harry, "Owe debt, you. Saved life. Pay how, you?"

Jack answered.

He saw Harry struggle to reply, since there would be no English word for it. Finally, Harry seemed to use the old way, the old word, since shock and outrage swept the room.

Marianne flushed, and fanned herself. Men appeared to grumble and women fled the room.

"Wrong you," Harry translated. "Not permissible. Monstrous."

A man handed her the Book of Ways and she held it out in front of her.

"People Baldwin's teach better us."

Jack turned to Harry. "She promised me before born. Baldwin try mate her. Bad. Bad all."

Marianne stared at the words on the book: Colonization and Reconstruction of Worlds in the Image of the Old South: An Experiment in Primitive Civilization Management, by Dr. H. B. Baldwin, et al.

Her watering, green on green eyes narrowed to slits, and she looked back up to him. Her long, forked tongue tasted the air, and she leapt, taking him to the floor.

Even as her long fangs dug deep into his flesh, he smiled. After she devoured his koa every one of her eggs would carry his gift of silence, and none of them would ever hear the nonsense of the Earthers.

He hoped their children would have her eyes.

[align=center]The End[/align]

By:

David Alan Jones

The little Goddess of Sound skips along a jungle path that meanders beneath the trees, skirting the three main villages where dark-skinned Yombex worship her and a few even pray to her though they know she cannot hear their words.

She pauses in a shallow stream. The cool water washes over her thin, brown ankles, rippling as she drags her feet along the stony bottom. She closes her eyes and breaths in the smells of mud and fungus.

A frog bounds away from the water's edge as Chi draws near. She laughs like the tinkle of little splashes. The sound causes red, blue and yellow flowers to blossom all along the banks.

Chi smiles at the tiny flowers.

TUM!

Chi's smile fades.

TUM!

Her eyes -- solid black pupils surrounded by brilliant white orbs -- scan the thick jungle.

TUM!

The Yombex call to her. She feels the concussion of their bone and hide drums in her feet, shaking the very earth beneath them.

TUM!

She cannot ignore her people. This call is as ancient as she -- as ancient as man's first communicative sound: the warning grunt, the beating of stick on stone, the first articulate word. Chi no more runs through the forest than sunlight falls from the heavens. She arrives at the tiny village of "Ch'uk Ya Byg Flop" before the drums' next strike.

TUM!

The drums cease. All is silent.

Arrayed before the little Goddess of Sound stands a gaggle of foreign men. These are strange men, like none Chi has ever seen. Their skins are pale as sand, their long hair is the color of goldenrod, and their bodies, almost to a man, are covered in a strange, silvery stone that looks hard as a beetle's carapace.

Behind these foreigners the assembled Yombex fall to their knees. The men drop their chest-high drums, the women press their babes to their breasts and each genuflects where he or she stands.

The pale men do not bow, though they look upon Chi with wonder. She forgives their ignorance. Surely they come from a land where the gods do not make them bow. Perhaps they were never taught.

One of the pale men holds up a sheaf of many bound pages. Upon one is a picture of Chi -- a skinny, dark-skinned girl dressed in worn tribal sarong and pantacat top. He points at her and says something to one of the other pale men, but Chi cannot read the man's words.

The pale men spread out and only now does Chi notice the black-skinned man among them. He has not bowed his head, nor does he look surprised to see the little goddess. He is Yomti, tribal chief of the Bexyom -- blood enemies to Chi's people.

Chi reads Yomti's lips as he says, "See, oh foreign king, she is but a child as I said. Take her and you shall conquer the Yombex."

Chi bares her little teeth, which are very white and very sharp. The pale men draw swords from their belts.

The men move to surround the little goddess, but she does not back away. They advance on her from the front and the rear and Chi crouches. Yomti is first to raise a blade -- a gleaming foreign blade -- against her.

Thunder like that of the most raucous storm issues from Chi's mouth. Although she cannot hear the sound, she savors its effect. The pale men nearest her drop their swords and fall to the ground writhing in pain. Yomti, who was closest, staggers back, blood running from his ears. As slow as leaves falling, he crumples to the ground and moves no more.

The thunder subsides, only to be replaced by a note of such clarity and such frequency, that nearby trees split at their trunks, birds fall dead from the sky, and the ten men closest to the little goddess are instantly struck deaf. It is the sound of cicadas -- millions of cicadas.

The few pale men still standing scramble away in every direction, most running from one doom towards another as they rush blindly into the untamed jungle.

Chi strides silently to where her people kneel. They have not heard the sounds; she would never harm them. One young woman looks up and sees a smiling child -- the little goddess -- looking down upon her.

"They would have killed us," she mouths at the deaf Goddess of Sound.

Chi nods and caresses the woman's face.

A pale man, wide-eyed and clearly half mad, rises and staggers towards them. He wears a thin coronet of beaten brass and a brown cape. He must be the pale chief.

Chi presses a small hand against the man's chest and feels the beat of his heart.

The pale chief screams something at her. She can feel his rank breath on her cheek, but she cannot read his words. They are pale and foreign.

TUM!

The pale man's heart beats.

TUM!

Chi begins to sing. It is the song of the cockatoo, if a cockatoo weighed eighty tons and had a megaphone for a beak.

TUM!

The pale man is frightened. He wants to run away; he wants to cover his ears, but he can do neither. He stands, mesmerized by the little goddess's gaze, touch, and song.

Tum. . .

Blood runs from the man's ears.

Tum. . . tum

The man's heart skips and his eyes begin to blanch white.

Tum. . . tum. . . . . . . tum

The man's shock of golden hair turns gray from roots to tips. He sags, but Chi forces him to stand with the last ounce of his strength.

. . . tum. . .

The Little Goddess of Sound stops singing just before the pale man's heart ceases its beat. She releases him and he falls to the ground deaf and blind and ruined.

The End

By:

Jaimie L. Elliott

“Describe again to me what blue looks like.”

Ruelin heard Prista sighing. “You always ask me that,” she admonished. She gave his hand a quick squeeze. “Watch your step here. There’s a sharp rock underfoot.”

Ruelin prodded with his staff. “I just don’t understand how it can be cold. You always say that blue is cold. And wet! Yet if that is the sky, how can the sun, which is hot, swim in it?”

Prista giggled. “Oh Ruelin, my love. I don’t even know how to respond to that. Keep asking me impossible questions and I’ll lead you over a cliff.”

Ruelin swung his face upwards, feeling the sunshine on his face. He tried to imagine the celestial orb, round and blistering, adrift without ropes or wires in this medium called a sky. Prista had stated that no clouds lazed today, the sky barren except for the sun. It amazed Ruelin that the sky possessed the ability to change, filling with clouds and rain or even nothing at all.

Ruelin wiped the sweat from his brow. “Is the altar here?”

“Yes,” she responded. He heard pages turned. “Just as the book said it would. The altar is weathered and partially eroded, but the ancient glyphs match what’s written.”

He exhaled a deep breath. “Lead me over there.”

Prista hesitated. “It’s not too late to go back.”

Ruelin heard the desperation in her voice. Harsher than he intended, he replied, “I can’t go back. If I do, I’ll never be able to live afterwards, always wondering, always speculating. Now take me over there.” A hoarse whisper escaped him. “Please.”

He heard Prista approach. Her gentled fingers grabbed his arm and escorted him a few steps forward. She took his hand and guided his fingers downward. He felt a hard, smooth stone slab, blistering from the sun’s heat. He leaned over and kissed her tenderly. “Give me the lyre,” he requested. He heard her unstrap the legendary instrument from her back. She placed it in his hands and he felt the smooth, beautiful wood, its comfortable weight recalling past performances.

He smiled. “It’s time. Let me begin.” He began to pray. The words burbled out, entreating. In the back of his mind, he imagined the sun, the mysterious sphere that managed to warm the world. He pleaded, almost demanded, the gift of sight from the mercurial god. He heard a faint buzzing as his praying reached a crescendo. “He hears me!” thought Ruelin. “He is listening!”

Quaking with fervor, he grabbed in one hand the ancient lyre, perfect and irreplaceable. In the other hand, he clutched the ax, raising it high above his head. The sounds of the concerts he had played sang through his memory. Snarling, he brought the weapon down. He heard the unmistakable crunch of wood smashed asunder, the twang of the metal strings. He swung down twice more.

He felt his heart snap as he pushed aside regret. He dropped the ax. It clattered on the stone next to him. He continued his supplications, the buzzing subdued but still present.

“Hear me, hear me!” he begged. His mind became focused. He willed his eyes to work. “I’ve given up my livelihood! You must listen to me!”

Almost imperceptibly, the droning sound changed from a steady hum to something akin to a pulse. The noise became sharper and comprehension finally dawned. “He’s laughing at me,” rasped Ruelin. “It wasn’t enough.” He slammed his fist on the mountaintop. “It’s not fair!” he screamed. “How can you do this to me?”

Enraged, he rose to his knees and threw his staff. He swept the broken offering from the altar. His hand found the ax lying next to him. He rained blows down upon the sacrificial stone, the sharp strikes echoing in the air.

“Ruelin, my love, it’s alright,” said Prista behind him, her voice filled with tears. She placed her hands on his shoulders.

“Not enough,” he croaked one last time. He rose, turned, and swung the ax in an arc.

Without thought. Savage. Soulless.

A sickening noise as the ax connected with flesh and bone. Ruelin heard her collapse. He let the tool fall from his numb fingers.

He stood frozen, unable to fathom. He felt surreal and detached.

Then the world appeared before him, chaotic, overwhelming, a barrage of color and new sensation. Nothing made sense. Still burdened with emotional shock, he lurched forward and tripped.

He searched around him, closed his eyes to shut out the noise of color, and found what he stumbled over. His fingers ran over the warm body of Prista. His lower lip trembled, the taboo act finally reaching through his consciousness. He cradled her, kneeling beside her, as he released his lamentation, a long sorrowful cry. The sounds of his wailing grew softer and he realized in horror the price afterward.

The world of sound and music departed. The god demanded it.

His heartbeat, rapid and thunderous, the last thing he heard until that, too, faded, dead to his ears.

He opened his eyes heavenward. In the midst of his grieving, he found the sky to be less chaotic, just one color. “I see blue, Prista,” he said, unable to hear his own voice. “I see it.”

His eyes found one thing in the azure expanse, brilliant and small. He stared at it in awe. “It’s so beautiful,” he whispered. He gazed upon the source of sunshine, ignoring the pain, until his eyesight began to darken, the tears running down his face.

The light became smaller…

…smaller…

…until it reached a pinprick. Then darkness once again.

He picked up his Prista in his arms and felt her warmth. He carried her as he walked forward, blind and deaf. “I’m sorry, Prista,” he said. He took one step after another until he reached the precipice. Stone gave way to endless sky.

He tumbled forth with his sun held tightly to his chest, into oblivion, into exoneration.

[align=center]THE END[/align]

By:

Lee Alon

Cordite was in the air, that and the ozone smell of pulse cannons discharging.

Jamal was being dragged by someone, he knew that much. It was Lt. Chatham, the one from Pasadena. He was holding Jamal by his harness and puling him over the ledge into the trench.

Jamal saw a dozen other troopers huddled there, scared looks on their faces. Looks that said it was over.

The lieutenant, so young it didn't seem right to even have him here in the first place, was talking to the others. His movements were very animated, the weapon slung over his shoulder moving in tandem.

Jamal was lying inside the trench. Now drifting smoke reached him, and he could feel the cold, frozen ground underneath him. His own weapon was still warm from being fired repeatedly until an explosion pushed him to the earth, silencing him for the time being until the officer came to get him out of the way.

He felt someone rushing from the other end of the trench, raised himself on his elbows and saw the medic, Alvin Young, hustling towards him. Good that someone still cared, Jamal reckoned, although the sentiment wasn't as strong as when he thought of home, his mother, sister and child.

Nothing will ever match that.

Young was bent down, saying something, superimposed over the roiling steel-colored sky.

Jamal made to indicate he couldn't hear anything, pointing with one hand to his left ear. Young nodded and reached into a small pouch, producing a needle. He pointed to it and Jamal agreed. One thing he did feel was pain.

After the injection things went a little bit haywire. Chatham was joined by another, higher ranking officer and it appeared they were rallying the troops.

Jamal was now lying next to another guy, this one with his face bandaged and not really moving. He guessed some time has passed since Young gave him that shot.

The smells of cordite and pulse weaponry were now fainter, replaced by another he got to know quite well over the last couple of weeks since the invasion began.

It was the woodsy scent their machines gave off. The backroom boys figured something in the lubricated joints that were so prominent in their designs resulted in that smell. No matter the reason, wherever you smelled it there was a very good chance you'd never smell much of anything else.

Since the first fire fight Jamal knew this action was symbolic, as most people, including the ones he loved, where either already gone or taken. Nothing worked against the invaders, except nukes but those only slowed them down. Their ships simply never stopped arriving in orbit, pouring out more of those fuckers.

He was angry, angry that life had to put him and those he loved at a time when something like this happened.

He raised himself again, seeing the others getting ready. They were packing up. The officers probably decided that without artillery and air support fighting would be even stupider than usually.

Jamal managed to get up, sort of. He peered over the trench and through the blue haze saw their hulking machines, the big ones, with countless smaller things boiling around them. Those were nicknamed mites pretty quick, but didn't lend themselves to squashing so good.

He felt someone touch him and turned to see Young talking to him. His lips were moving slowly, but Jamal couldn't hear a thing. Something bright and hot smashed into the network not half a click away, and he couldn't hear that, either.

Young was tugging at him as Jamal saw everybody else heave-ho over the trench and proceed away from the battle, away from the invaders and away from certain death.

The bandaged guy wansn't moving and no one was tending to him, so Jamal figured he was gone.

The two officers were still talking, arguing maybe. Jamal came up to ledge and was about to push when he realized he didn't recall seeing the radio guy, DK, anywhere. If the radio was out, then they'd have no way to reach anyone else with the satelllites and cells all down.

As he was about to go over, the air about him moved slightly. He knew the pores were coming, the canister having popped above them, he got out of the glorified ditch and ran as fast as he could, trying to catch up to the others.

He looked back to see Young on the cold ground, a pore wriggling its way into his back.

Jamal turned to run, a few pores hitting around him, but they were too slow on the ground. He hobbled, several other guys dying nearby, but the officers were still good.

***

At night, they were in a town. There were no people, no power. They got rid of most of their gear and weapons, and were mostly in civvies. It was agreed that other part of their lives was no longer relevant. That's what the officers were arguing over before.

Jamal still couldn't hear anything, though he wanted to. The fire they had going probably crackled nice, and that guy, the one he thought was from Show Low but wasn't, he was playing the guitar. They probably found one somewhere here. Jamal enjoyed music.

He fished a book out of a backpack he found before, a book that went into his kit when they went out to stand against the invaders. This book has been with him for a while. Footfall.

He wished it were that easy.

[align=center]THE END[/align]

By:

Robert Moriyama

Nadia, are you ready?

Nadia Mirasova blinked in annoyance as glowing text appeared in mid-air just over Dmitri's head. The voice-to-text "heads-up display" was supposed to be above her normal line of sight, and she supposed that it was -- Dmitri was, after all, at least 20 centimeters taller than she was -- but it was still distracting. It didn't help that the interface provided no clue as to who was speaking, or where they were; only the fact that Dmitri was looking at someone behind her prompted her to turn toward the speaker.

"Hello, Mr. Boorman," she said. "We are just finishing up here, making sure that the suit is functioning properly." Maddeningly, her own words now scrolled through the air over Boorman's head.

Boorman's lips moved, and a tiny fraction of a second later, more text marched across her field of vision. The suit, yes, the suit, how wonderful it must be that it lets you dance again. When you lost your hearing, you must have thought your career was over..."

Nadia suppressed the urge to snarl at the promoter -- a boorish man, indeed. His tuxedo fit him like an overstuffed sausage casing, and the pathetic way he arranged his remaining hair! But he was giving her the chance to perform, to prove herself, when no one else would.

"Yes, it is thrilling," she said. "They could not restore my hearing -- the nerve damage was too severe even for the most advanced cochlear implants. But the suit -- it lets me feel the music, to experience it with all its nuances intact. In some ways, it may be better than hearing."

Lies. Like the voice-to-text display, it was a poor substitute for what nature had taken away. Changes in pitch and volume were translated into a tingle here, a feeling of heat or cold there, swirlings of color if she activated the visual interface, tastes or odors that changed with uncanny speed. Her first few days in the suit had been a nightmare, twitching and stumbling about in response to a thousand phantom touches, sneezing as smells changed from sweet to foul in instants. Dmitri had been a saint, comforting her when she wept in frustration, endlessly adjusting the sensitivity of the sensor mesh and fiddling with the software that changed sound into everything but sound.

And she had learned. The brain is a wonderful thing, capable of adapting to the most bizarre and extreme changes in circumstance. Dmitri had showed her old video of psychology students who learned to function normally while viewing the world through prisms that inverted everything. Then, when the prisms were removed, they had to learn to see normally again! Blind people with early versions of artificial vision systems had found ways to derive meaning from a few dots or lines of light; deaf people had been able to interpret the crude stimuli provided by primitive cochlear implants as sound and speech.

She had applied a dancer's discipline to turning signals that would be symptoms of madness in any other context into mood and rhythm. It was not music as anyone had ever experienced it before -- but it was far more subtle than the thumping bass beats that allowed other hearing-impaired people to imitate the clumsy flailing that passed for dancing in the clubs.

Miss Mirasova, it's time.

Nadia nodded at the stage manager who had, thank God, spoken where she could see him, and glided past Boorman and onto the stage.

Stage right, she saw the grand piano, with her old friend and accompanist Vladislav Tzerbinski at the keyboard. Seated beside him, Janice Tillman cradled her cello between her legs like an old familiar lover. The set was simple -- a few wooden chairs, a lectern upon which a large book lay open, folding screens to represent walls. Nadia knew that the book was actually a hardbound collection of cartoons, but the audience would imagine it to be something more profound, -- a Bible, or a hymnal, perhaps.

The audience exploded in applause, thrilled to see her perform -- or try to perform. Perhaps they expected a clumsy, freakish display as "that dancer who went deaf" tried to move to music when she couldn't hear a single note. The "suit" and neural implants translated the shouts and clapping into something like the crawling of ants over her arms and legs, a sharp scent -- vinegar and musk -- and the taste of burnt sugar. If they hadn't prepared for this moment with recordings of live concerts, she would have been overwhelmed.

Instead, she let her right arm drift upward, as if pulled by invisible strings. Vladimir pounded out the opening chords of the "Queen of the Sea" solo from Lacotte's Ondine, and the audience fell silent.

And she danced.

People often said that they felt music washing over them. Nadia truly felt the music now, but it did not pass over and through her like water. It poked and teased and caressed and chilled and burned her. It filled her nostrils with the scent of violets and the reek of decay, changing in a heartbeat to chocolate tinged with celery and rhubarb.

Somehow, out of that chaotic storm of sensory input, she drew a melody. The pain of dancing en pointe, the strain of extending her limbs beyond what most would consider their normal range of motion, even the thud of landing after a grand jete, merely served as punctuation for the torrent of sensations flowing from the sensor web under her costume to the circuitry implanted in her brain.

With only a few moment's pause, Vlad and Janice launched into an excerpt from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, specially arranged to allow the low thrum and moan of the cello to guide Nadia's limbs through Sergeev's intricate choreography. And she danced ...

When the performance ended, when the last note had been played and the last step taken, the applause was ... deafening.

[center]The End[/center]

By:

Gareth L. Powell

For long hours, I sat by the open window, with the open book on my lap, pretending to read and watching her play. She had the piano set up at the far end of the room, by the door, her metal fingers skittering backward and forward across the black and white keys, the hydraulics in her legs pumping the pedals, and bracing her against the crescendos of the first and third movements.

Of course, the music meant nothing to her - being deaf, she couldn't hear it. It was a gift, an offering... a mathematical exercise designed to please me.

Eventually, when she wound down, I closed the book. I got up and walked to the door, my own joints and gears hissing and clanking as I moved.

As I passed, I touched her copper hair.

'Thank you, my love,' I said.

[align=center]The End[/align]

By:

Bill Wolfe

I see you're reading a history book, kid. That's good.

You read in there about how we won The War? You did?

Does it say in there that the aliens almost beat us? No?

Just says we sent 'em packin' does it? Well, that's mostly true. But don't you believe it that we didn't have to work for it.

What's that, kid? Our superior fighting spirit and technology? That's a bunch of sh. . .uh. . . nonsense!

No it ain't okay. I promised your momma that I'd watch my language around you and that's what I'm gonna do.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, technology.

I was there kid, and I'm tellin' you that if anything, they was a little more advanced than we was. On the ground, anyway. Way I hear it, out in space we was evenly matched. It was ship-for-ship every time they tried to fight. Every time. Well, you really gotta have your back against the wall to be willing to die just to kill one of your enemy. That ain't no way to fight no war. Period.

No kid, this war was fought and won on the ground, by Infantry. And I don't mind sayin' that the only reason we won was that we got resupplied first. They was usin' their ESP to good advantage and was pushin' us back hard and fast until we got fresh ammo, grub and replacements. Especially the replacements. Lots of 'em.

That book don't say nothin' about their ESP?

Does it say they were all deaf-mutes? Born that way? Well, that part's true enough.

They was deaf and dumb, all right, but they had ESP, and it gave 'em one hel. . .uh. . . heck of an advantage when we had to fight 'em nose to snout down there in them swamps.

Huh? Nah, they didn't like swamps any better'n us. But same as us, they liked all that high-quality uranium ore down inside that planet. But we was soldiers, kid. Soldiers ain't supposed to care what the war's about.

And we didn't. Not those of us who had to slug it out with them in that rank, steaming, slimy mud. And I mean slug it out, too. It's a good thing we have a whole history fighting wars without any of the technological military advantages we have today.

Not that our troops were ready for it at the beginning. Not that theirs were, either.

Our damping fields will stop any electric motor, which completely canceled the superiority provided by their powered suits. And our unpowered ablative body armor was pretty good at dissipating their beam weapons unless they managed to concentrate their shots in one place. But they learned fast, those critters. Fast.

Our bullets chewed them up pretty good until they started salvaging pieces of their dead, worthless, heavy suits to use as makeshift shields and redoubts. By the end some of them were even wearing homemade helmets, vests and leggings that were dang-near bulletproof. But we learned. . .we learned. The trick was to shoot for where they were soft.

What's that you say, kid? No they really was deaf and mute. Didn't have the voice box to make sounds or the ears to hear 'em. But they did have these specialized organs that let them modulate and transmit their ESP signals and others that received them.

Hell, kid. . .uh. . .do me a favor and don't tell your mama about that, okay? Thanks, I appreciate it.

Anyway, they even made something like music that was just for their ESP.

'Course, it had to be better than that junk you young people listen to, today. How you can even call that music. . .

What's that? No, it didn't sound like nothing. I told ya' it was just for their ESP. I even seen one of their music makers, once. We thought it was a new kind of weapon and turned it over to the CO after a raid on one of their camps. It was long, shaped a little like a rifle but it had these six metal wires stretched across it. CO later told us that it was something they used to make ESP music, but now that I think about it, maybe he was just tryin' to keep us in the dark and it really was a weapon. SOS, if you get my drift.

Wasn't long after that raid that they started using their ESP to start kicking our ass. . .our backsides. . .all over that slimeball of a planet.

We knew we were in trouble when they started jamming the radio frequencies. . .all of them. Nothin' but loud static in your ears.

Radio waves? Well, they used them, of course, but they didn't really need 'em, you see. They had that damn ESP going for them and could communicate with each other over fair distances. Once they found out that we couldn't do that weird trick with our minds, they started making headway. I lost a lot of good friends before we figured out that they could coordinate attacks over long distances even with all the frequencies jammed.

Turns out their ESP would even tell 'em if one of us was tryin' to sneak up on 'em. It was weird, kid. . .spooky even. They could tell if something close by so much as moved, even when they wasn't looking.

How's it work?

You sure you wanna know?

Well, okay, but you gotta understand that I don't know any of the technical jabber.

Okay then. Seems they got this alien organ or gland or something that vibrates. And you'll learn in science class that vibrations can travel through any kind of material.

Well, they had this other organ that could read these vibrations in. . .and kid, you ain't gonna believe this. . .could read these vibrations and make sense of them in air. Nothing but air.

Once they jammed the radio frequencies. . . we was the deaf mutes.

[align=center]The End[/align]

By:

Larissa March

Ciara hurled her plate across the kitchen, screaming at the top of her lungs into the suffocating silence. Panting, she pounded her fists on the counter and glared at the splotches of spaghetti sauce covering her bookcase full of useless music books and medical texts. She beat the scarred surface until her knuckles split, careless of her pianist’s fingers – what good were they to her now?

They had to be wrong, there had to be a way to fix it. Music was her life! Damn the doctors, their helpful suggestions, and their completely unhelpful medicine. “Idiopathic sudden hearing loss” was a description, not a diagnosis, but not one of the dozen she’d begged for help could tell her anything more useful! If one more person told her how brilliant Beethoven was even after he lost his hearing, there would be murder, and she wouldn’t be sorry. Beethoven was a genius, one of a kind – were you supposed to just accept that life sucked and go on with it if you didn’t have that luck? No way in hell!

Drained and exhausted, she walked to the sink and washed the blood from her hands, then started cleaning up her splattered dinner. The incoming call light on the TTY unit attached to her phone started blinking, but she certainly didn’t feel like being social. Anything, anywhere away from the human race was what she wanted now.

She walked away from it to stare out the rain washed window by the baby grand piano that took up most of her living room. She hardly saw the wind lashed trees illuminated by the streetlights as she brooded with one hand resting absently on the neglected instrument, brushing the dust from it.

She could still play, she knew. She had been just starting to make a

living as a concert pianist, and she knew just how good she was, but she knew just how much she had lost when she couldn’t hear herself anymore. She couldn’t do that. She had tried, once, at the advice of a well-intentioned therapist who the third specialist had referred her to. She had sat at the bench with her bare feet against the hardwood floor to better sense the vibrations, and had played all of three bars before crashing her hands violently against the keys and running out of the apartment.

She had thrown a blanket over it when she came back, and hadn’t touched it since.

Lightning strobed and flickered, and suddenly Ciara couldn’t stand it. She had to get out, or she was going to break something much more precious than a plate.

She grabbed her jacket and fled, slamming the door behind her with a silent and unsatisfying crash.

The driving rain was almost warm, but the wind seemed much stronger than it had looked from her sheltered living room. She pushed against it for the sheer angry joy of something to fight, not bothering about what direction she was going. She stumbled down the sidewalk, head down and shoulders hunched as she beat her way across the street and found herself heading into one of the pocket sized parks that were tucked into odd corners of the city. The biggest oak she had ever seen was the centerpiece of the small space, regally shading a couple of benches and a small pond – beautiful, even in the little light thrown by the park lamp posts, but certainly nowhere to go in a thunderstorm!

Deciding for sanity and sense, Ciara stopped at the edge of the park and stared at the king tree. Was someone standing by it? She pushed her drenched hair from her face and peered into the shadows.

Someone was, she was almost certain. A flash of moving white convinced her. That was insane! She took a deep breath, then let it out. Even if she yelled, she was pretty sure the wind was going to drown her out, and she was self-conscious about how her speech might sound to a stranger. Everyone told her she sounded fine, but how could she know?

A sudden flash of lightning lit the tree, followed hard by a crack of thunder strong enough to rattle her bones. She blamed her sudden shiver on that and the gusting wind, since she couldn’t possibly have seen what she thought she saw under the spreading branches.

Ciara had never been strong on her Irish heritage, but her grandfather had been a great storyteller. His chilling tales of the ancient woman in winding rags who marked you for imminent death once you’d heard her wail had made a lasting impression. They were stories, though, simply stories spun to frighten children and make them mind. There was no banshee, and certainly not one - the lightning strobed again and she fled without intent from the crone who crouched below the tree, head thrown back and mouth stretched wide in a silent rictus.

Again a brilliant flash, and the grinding thunder that came with it shook her no more than the shaking of the ground when the king oak was split and shattered by the spear of lightning, falling across the sidewalk where she had stood moments before.

Stunned, she whirled and stared at the fallen giant. She looked back towards the smoking ground where it had grown for so long, but she couldn’t tell if she saw a wisp of white or not.

Biting her lip, she pulled her jacket tight against the storm and turned towards home.

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By:

Kate Thornton

The sound of the empty winds blowing through ruins a thousand years old decreased as the evening fell still. The harsh sunlight of an hour before left a lingering heat in the rubble, not enough to entice long-dead creatures back to life, but enough to cause a faint red glow in the eerie crags. But no one heard the winds, or saw the glow.

For a millennium, the ruins had stood, once a whole city but now just a collection of oddly-shaped bits of concrete, stone and steel. The builders were long dead, wiped out by their own contentious behavior, with no survivors, no progeny, no legacy other than the ruins and the secret below them.

Hardly anyone came to this place. At first discovery, it had been explored by the initial settling teams, and then declared off limits as a possible danger. But as the years went by, the only real danger was the instability of the remaining structures and the possibility that one could wander out here alone, get lost or injured, and not be found until it was too late. It was far from any settlement and offered only a lonely and insistent reminder that someone else had been here first.

Cora didn't mind the danger or the solitude. She was an experienced climber, always brought provisions and a communicator, and was very careful. The melancholy loneliness of the place intrigued her. In the crowded settlement, her people enjoyed the warmth of continual companionship, the communion of close living, the strength of numbers. Only a few ever sought to be alone, and solitary pursuits, while not frowned upon, were rare.

She found a flat spot inside the perimeter of broken walls and set up her communicator, then unpacked a bag of snacks and stuck a flexible tube into it. She flattened herself out and absorbed the warmth of the floor. Cora knew something lay under the floor, but in her many visits to the place she had been unable to determine what it was. It felt like a vast set of dry chambers, like lungs.

She tried again to pass through the barrier into the chambers, but was unable to do so. Eventually the floor turned cooler and she moved. She began to slowly perambulate the ruins, gliding carefully over the rubble, avoiding anything sharp or too fragile to hold her weight without breaking. Here and there, pockets of warmth remained and she absorbed them with pleasure. So intent was she on the pursuit of the warmth that she failed to notice the cracks in an unfamiliar section of the flooring. Her weight caused a breach and she fell.

She was uninjured, but disoriented and confused. The air was old, stale, and full of crackling particulates. She moved enough to assure herself that there was no danger of falling even further into the interior of the ruins, then reached out on either side, feeling rows of metal pieces interspersed with dry materials. She would have to find the edge of this place in order to climb out. She carefully moved across the rubble, recognizing metal and stone, but not recognizing the dry, flaking materials. She picked one up and examined it. It was not edible, but had an organic quality to it. Could it be a part of one of the previous inhabitants? Was it a dry lung?

She tucked the item into her pouch and continued along the floor until a tall obstruction offered a way back to the surface. Attaching to it, she pulled herself up and found her way back to the familiar flat place where she had left her communicator.

She was uninjured, so there was no need to communicate just yet. She consumed her snack and rested. She would take the flaking object back to the settlement as she had taken the very first object she had found at the ruins. No had one ever found a use for the first object, a tube-like piece of metal with little protrusions and holes along its length. A bit of building material, perhaps, she had conjectured.

This new bit of detritus would probably be equally mystifying. What had they used them for, those long-dead unknowns? Cora felt the flaking object. It was leaved, like the inside of a lung, but without any inflation. What could it be? She remembered bearing the first object back to the settlement. She had carried it aloft, and the winds had blown through it. There was no one to hear the whistle of the flute, though, just as there would be no one to read the book. Cora's kind could only feel.

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