Future Science Fiction Digest Issue 4: Future Science Fiction Digest, #4

By Alex Shvartsman, Mike Resnick, Shaenon K. Garrity and 6 more

Issue 4 of FUTURE SF is themed Alien Invasion. It features eight stories from the UK, Russia, USA, China, Sweden, and Italy.

Table of Contents:

"They Are Coming" by Paul R. Hardy
"The Building Atop the Hill" by Alexander Bachilo (translated by Alex Shvartsman)
"A Typical Tale of Bloodlust and Conquest" by Mike Resnick
"You Came to the Tower" by Shaenon K. Garrity
"Through the Fog, a Distant Land Appears" by Wanxiang Fegnian (translated by Nathan Faires)
"Yi" by Oskar Källner (translated by Gordon Jones)
"The Last Trial" by Stephen S. Power
"The Messiah of the Thirteenth Colony" by Davide Camparsi (translated by Michael Colbert)

• Language: English
• Publisher: UFO Publishing
• Release date: Sep 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393438571

Book preview

Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 4

Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 4

Edited by Alex Shvartsman Paul R. Hardy Alexander Bachilo Mike Resnick Shaenon K. Garrity Wanxiang Fengnian Oskar Källner Stephen S. Power Davide Camparsi

UFO Publishing

Contents

Foreword

They Are Coming

The Building Atop the Hill

A Typical Tale of Bloodlust and Conquest

You Came to the Tower

Through the Fog, a Distant Land Appears

Yi

The Last Trial

The Messiah of the Thirteenth Colony

Foreword

Alex Shvartsman

The fall issue of Future Science Fiction Digest is packed with fifty thousand words of fiction from the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, China, Sweden, and Italy.

The primary theme for this issue is Alien Invasion. While this theme may evoke well-worn tropes from military science fiction novels, games, and movies, I thought there were quite a few novel and interesting ways to approach the subject, and our writers didn't disappoint. They examined the theme from every angle, from Bachilo's nihilistic horror to Resnick's irreverent humor, delivering stories that dig deeper than one might expect.

As with the previous volume, we close the issue with a pair of off-theme stories. Stephen S. Power tackles the very contemporary theme of automation while Camparsi examines religion in a near-future science fiction setting.

Happy reading!

They Are Coming

Paul R. Hardy

THEY ARE COMING

Teshana Wright

Gizmodo.com

---

Darlene McKinnon saw aliens long before the rest of us did.

Fifteen years ago she was serving as a helicopter mechanic at Nellis AFB, making regular flights back and forth to the Creech UAV base. On one of those trips, she and the flight crew saw something flying alongside them. They reported that it looked like a fish, darting back and forth in the sky. Their superiors sent them for psych evaluations and told them it was nothing but an experimental drone.

Darlene thinks different. Darlene thinks she was lied to. She thinks the Air Force is covering up something much bigger than a secret drone program, and she wants to tell you all about it. It only costs $35 for a ticket to see her live, or $9.99 to buy her self-published book on Amazon. Or, if you're cheap (like me), you can watch most of it on YouTube. And she sure sounds like a standard-issue UFO crank.

Except that she's also a state representative in the Arizona Legislature.

Interesting.

She was speaking at a UFO convention in upstate New York on the same weekend I was stuck in Albany without much else to do, so I indulged my curiosity and arranged an interview. I met her in the hotel bar, shortly before she was due to deliver her talk. She was the classic dressed-down politician in mom jeans and Arizona tan, greeting me in the kind of warm, folksy style you'd expect from a woman who sells herself as the salt of the earth, all packaged up for the supermarket shelf. I wanted to ask her: how did she end up here, among the UFO enthusiasts, abductees, cosplayers, whistleblowers, grifters, and merch-sellers?

But I never had the chance. Because that's when we got the news. That's when everyone got the news.

A UFO convention was either the best or the worst place to be on that day. Damn near every phone bleeped an alert. People read them with sudden fear in their eyes. Screens switched to news channels with chyrons reading ALIEN SHIPS SEEN BEYOND PLUTO. Gasps spread around the bar.

Then the screaming began.

I checked my own phone and found that first low-res black and white image that came back from the New Horizons probe. The one that makes them look like a school of monstrous deep-sea fish with too many eyes.

I showed it to the state representative. All she said was: Huh. And this while we were surrounded by people freaking the hell out, running back and forth as though there were anywhere to run to.

Then her own phone went off. It was WNBC, wanting a quote. She said yes, and went live on air while I was still sitting there—which is, excuse me, rude.

I've been back over the recording since. The anchor was barely able to control a chuckle as he began: On the line now from Albany's Clear Skies UFO convention is Arizona State Representative Darlene McKinnon. She claims she saw an alien spaceship over Nevada fifteen years ago. So, Representative—you've seen aliens. Is that what we're seeing in these pictures from New Horizons?

And she paused for a moment. Pursed her lips. Thought about it. As though she wasn't even hearing the chaos all around us.

Representative? said the anchor. Can you hear us? Sounds like things are a little crazy there ...

And I swear there was a moment when she made her mind up.

I can hear you, Chuck. And yes, those are aliens.

The same ones you saw?

The same ones I saw. She must have seen my jaw drop, because she raised a finger to stop me from interrupting. Well, no, I can't tell you why they're here. All we have is one fuzzy image, and that ain't a whole lot. But if this is real then we need to get ready because they're coming. They're coming to Earth. No, I can't tell you any more than that. Well, you'll have to ask the federal government. They have information about aliens they're not willing to disclose, and they owe it to the people to explain why that is.

The call ended, and she smiled at me as if I hadn't seen the whole thing. As if I hadn't seen her make up a ton of bullshit in a heartbeat. She apologized and hurried away, phone back at her ear again. The next call came from Fox News.

It didn't take her long to hone her message. The aliens she saw fifteen years ago soon became scouts, sent ahead of their fleet to spy on us. But now the recon was over, and the main force was coming.

She repeated that, over and over again on channel after channel:

They are coming.

They are coming.

They. Are. Coming.

The attendees at the UFO convention loved it, once they'd stopped panicking. They took it up as a slogan almost as soon as they heard her say it. They Are Coming T-shirts were on sale online within hours.

Darlene McKinnon was long gone by then. She was too busy turning herself into a real celebrity to pay much attention to the folks in Albany. Last I heard they didn't even refund the tickets for her talk. Not that anyone in the UFO community cares. She's one of them, she's famous, and that's all that matters. After all, she's right.

They are coming.

PROFILE: DARLENE MCKINNON

By Teshana Wright

Washington Post Magazine

---

Darlene McKinnon wants you to know just one thing. I'm pretty sure you've heard it by now. It's on the homepage of her website. It's on the cover of her book. It's the first thing she says when she addresses a crowd. She's said it on TV, she's said it on Twitter, she said it on the floor of Congress when she made her first speech as junior senator from Arizona.

They are coming.

So my first question to her was: how does it feel to be wrong about that?

She smiles in her wood-paneled senate office, echoing the smile in the author photo on the back of her book (copies of which are stacked shoulder high in a display stand beside her desk). Well, Teshana, I don't think I'm wrong. They're still coming. Just because they're headed for Jupiter right now doesn't mean they aren't going to slingshot round and come straight for us. And we are not going to be ready when they do.

She doesn't mention that this is impossible, according to current observations. The aliens aren't traveling at warp speed. They're subject to the same rules of orbital mechanics as everything else, and they're slowing down. They're getting ready to make an extended visit to the Jovian system.

But Darlene has no intention of letting simple things like facts stand in her way.

And this Jupiter Peace Mission, rebuilding the MarsX ship to go out there? I fear for anyone who sets foot on that vessel. I really do. We're pouring billions into a deathtrap for our best and brightest when what we need is weapons that can beat those things.

She readily forgets the billions of tax dollars being spent on the orbital defense network. The reborn nuclear industry stockpiling nuclear weapons. The private space contractors building rockets by the thousand to give the aliens a neat little fuck you if they ever come close enough. But none of it is even remotely adequate for the senator from Arizona.

Have you seen the size of those monsters? They're big enough to eat a moon. Is it any wonder people call them 'star-eaters'?

Well, no. It's because they look a little like the deep sea fish of the same name and somebody made a funny meme about it once. But why let that stand in the way of a good argument?

Nukes just aren't going to do the job against ships of that size. We need a bigger bomb, and the only thing bigger than an H-bomb is antimatter. That's pure annihilation. We have to be able to annihilate those things. We need a Manhattan Project for antimatter weapons, and I'm not even seeing Staten Island in the current budget proposal.

Darlene McKinnon doesn't know a damn thing about science that she didn't read in the first paragraph of a Wikipedia page. But she has her gut, and her gut knows a thing or two. The other thing it knows is that she's been lied to by the government, ever since she reported a UFO sighting while on a transport copter over Nevada.

Folks like me have been seeing aliens for decades now, but what happens when we report it? It gets hushed up. It gets hidden in a vault. They take all those reports and hide them in a sealed vault under the Pentagon. They've got secrets down there about alien contact going back damn near a century. Secrets we need to survive, because they are coming. You can believe it or not, but they are coming.

Funny thing, though. That hasn't always been her position when it comes to her very own alien sighting.

She first ran for senate seven years before the aliens arrived, and eight years after she saw a UFO. The primary shouldn't have been any obstacle to her; she was running against a washed-up incumbent who'd been exposed as a fraudster and sexual assaulter. She should have beaten him hands down. She would have, if one of her crewmates on that helicopter ride hadn't come forward to reveal the UFO report that both of them signed.

Did she confirm it? Did she assert the truth? Did she own it?

Hell, no.

She said, categorically, that she'd seen unexpected aerial phenomena and she'd reported them, as per air force regulations. But no aliens. No sir. Nuh-uh. She was too busy serving her country for that kind of nonsense.

Her crewmate said she was a liar, and the voters chose to believe him.

She lost the primary and went back to the state legislature. But she didn't give up; she ran for the United States House of Representatives in the next two cycles, losing both times. By then it was obvious she was a busted flush. She was done. No second acts in American politics, yadda yadda yadda. And sometime around then, she changed her tune about aliens. I can't begin to guess why, unless it was something to do with the speaker fees. And the merchandising revenue. And the Patreon account where you too can spend five bucks a month to help Darlene with the grand cause of UFO disclosure.

But then the real aliens came. And here she is in the United States Senate, right where she was aiming for in the first place, talking about things she was once too embarrassed to mention.

I think she realizes what my angle is when I ask about the failed primary run. Her eyes narrow. Her lips purse. She gives me a hot glare that could have burnt the flesh off a crocodile.

But that's the only beat she skips.

Well, all that's a matter of public record, she says. And you know what? I admit it. I admit that I didn't want to believe what it was I saw that night. Not for the longest time, I didn't. But I guess the good lord above wanted to teach me a lesson for not trusting my own two eyes, because here we are. Aliens are real. We've got star-eaters in this system. Right this minute. There's no one who can hide that truth. Not anymore.

I open my mouth to ask another question, but she's given up on listening.

And I am not the only one who feels this way. There are people all over this great nation who are fed up. Fed up with being lied to. Fed up with being told we're cranks when the government knew aliens were real all along. I've brought a message from all those fine folk to Washington DC and if the federal government thinks it can ignore that message—if it thinks it can keep that archive sealed—then we're just going to have to assume the worst. And act accordingly.

I ask her for clarification, because that sounds like a threat. She tells me I've got my quote. Interview over. I'm ushered out of the office so fast my heels don't touch the carpet.

And as the alien fleet makes its slow, ponderous way towards Jupiter, I have to worry. Because me and most other people are content to guess about the aliens' motives until the evidence comes in. But Darlene McKinnon knows in her gut what they're here for. She has certainty on her side. And if reality ever coincides with that certainty, even for just a moment?

Then we might have something worse than aliens to worry about.

TESH. IS. TALKING.

(Episode 16, Season 3)

---

[Audience applause]

Okay, everyone. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Sir, if you can restrain your enthusiasm. Or take your medication, I don't care which.

[Audience laugh]

Okay, so I guess you already know what I'm about to say. You all got your cellphones. You all read your Twitter. So here it is: while I was coming into this studio, I was attacked. Physically attacked.

[Silence]

By dumbasses.

[Nervous laughter]

Because what else you going to call them? Alien Truthers? Disclosure Campaigners? Great Red Spot Mourners? They're a bunch of