Bonjour. Thanks for the visit. You are about to launch into an adventure at AntipodeanSF, the online magazine that's devoted to the regular monthly publication of fabulous and original science-fiction, fantasy, or horror mini-stories of about 500–1000 words each, with occasional feature stories of 2000 words and beyond.
AntipodeanSF will entertain you and occasionally deliver you somewhere unusual — yet won't take hours to read...
Please peruse all of this month's stories, and then you can listen to them again in audio a few months later on the AntiSF Radio Show...
...Nuke.
My twin sister, Amy, drowned when we were six. I’d been convinced she would kill me, like she’d killed the goldfish, and I suspected, the hamster. When our beagle disappeared, I knew I’d be next. So I shoved Amy into the deep end of the pool.
As I got older, I began to wonder if I’d misjudged the situation, been misled by an overactive imagination. I mean, kindergarteners don’t murder their siblings, do they? I decided I’d made a horrible mistake. Amy’s sweet little-girl laughter rang every night across my dreams.
It was a dream come true for Geraldine Fisher. All her girlhood fantasies, her dreams of a fairy tale romance had happened. She met Hans. She’ll never know what made her answer that classified ad, but the fate that led her to it was a strong force and made the impossible happen.
On their first meeting, when Hans rolled his wheelchair to her door, she would be be first to say that her heart sank. But he was so beautiful and charming and funny and quirky that his disability was soon forgotten. After ten minutes she was thinking “keeper” and after a half an hour they were confessing their love for one another.
Mother and daughter were alone. Dull-grey, insignificant specks lost in the vast expanse of the universe. Confined in the hydrogel-filled capsules, with food printers hooked up to their navels, breathing tubes inserted in their mouths to convert adverse elements into oxygen, free from the ravages of zero gravity, not ageing even a second, cocooned within a drifting matrix. Alone, they had been dreaming for a long time.
Lili chatted with her mother via the umbilical cord. With her lips sealed to prevent respiratory arrest, Lili couldn’t converse in a conventional sense. Her glued eyelids and the deep stillness of sleep blocked her view of her mother. Lili couldn’t hear her mother because of sphincters grafted in her ears to prevent the gel from flooding her. Yet a series of images and emotions flashed through Lili’s mind, which she imagined her mother had sent to comfort her during their intergalactic journey. Her mother cradled her without grazing her skin and sang to her in silence. Lili smiled in her dreams and tried to let her mother know that she, too, loved her.
I thank my backside for alerting me to the fact that something was very wrong. I’d been a long-haul pilot for over thirty years, and though the triply-redundant flight management system said everything was fine, my bum’s numbness meter disagreed.
The FMS had us on track, on time, nine hours out over the Pacific with another eight to run. It’s hardly precise, time estimation by seat of the pants, but I knew over ten hours must have elapsed since departure from Sydney. Barring some physiological change in the downstairs department since last roster, onboard time and real time were diverging.
Outsiders, for some reason, seem to find us a little strange, here in 'F**k Nowhere; though they never have the intestinal fortitude to say it to our persons: maybe it's our looks. We're all ruggedly handsome and ruggedly built, male and female alike; a respectable average five-five in height by the time we own a full set of chompers (however briefly); sun-tanned and fit. Not like the pale, sullen (or sometimes flushed and angry) personages, who turn up here (lost usually) from time to time.
They show up here in their fancy infernal combustion engined automobiles — boasting ever-new, increasingly bold and garish ornamentations on their radiator grilles that seemingly bear no relation to Henry Ford whatsoever — exclaiming surprise, re: the town's erstwhile folklore status. B.F. Nowhere doesn't appear on any known map, you see — but everyone's heard of it.
I’m a precursor to a great lineage. Even though I’m fleshless, I’ve still got bones. And wings, too. Even so, they don’t melt like those of Icarus. I grew up speaking French, and I learned Japanese at a later date. My siblings are scattered around the world, but nobody is so treasured as I have been here in Japan.
Let me see now. Oh, it was more than a century ago.
When a small spaceship landed in my backyard, I was more afraid for the alien than I was of the alien. I had been half-washing dishes looking out the window when I saw a small, black beetle-shaped spaceship land in my backyard. Hands still wet, I took off my housecoat. I grabbed my man’s raggedy Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl XLVII jersey off the back of a kitchen table chair and threw it on over my bra and panties. Holding my housecoat, not wearing any shoes, I raced down the back steps.
Ahem. Cadets! My name is 3rd Sub-Commander Nguyen. Let me send up a big Texas welcome to y’all for your tour of duty on Hortus III. Now, look at all you scrubs grinning ear-to-ear, sure you hit paydirt — two full cycles on the beach planet, the flower planet, the waterfall planet, the posting every grunt dreams about. And really, ain’t it the most beautiful dang thing you ever seen? We think it is, at least. I always say, you haven’t lived until you’ve fallen asleep to the twin sunsets over Tranquility Lagoon with a margarita in your hand. You should be happy you’re here. Know why? ‘Cause we’re happy you’re here! Welcome, welcome, welcome!
What really does lie out there?
Hieronymus leans back, cricks his long neck, and sighs. It’s a question the mapmaker continually ponders. The great unknown lands, the uncharted oceans. No one’s ever returned from a flight over such vast reaches.
The script on the document in front of him is only half inked: Here be…
1 – Alone
There are two-hundred souls on board, fifty in B-ring. When I tour corridors drenched in light dimmed by the Pacific above, I see no one. I don’t hear anyone either, only the low groan of Inverness colony and my stomach’s pleas for sustenance. Beyond hunger I feel alone, but I’m not. Proof? A baby doll is proof there are others in Inverness I haven’t seen in weeks.
Or months.
Hi, can you hear me? Some visitors complain my voice is too low, or too high.
My name is Zippo. I live at Bungalow 15, Dashwood Estate with my two younger brothers, Echo and Bravo. We have no dad — but we have a mother.
Dashwood is a pleasant place to live in — so Mother says, but she rarely lets us go outside to see for ourselves. She believes we might get lost — or even kidnapped. I once heard a visitor tell Mother she has a vivid imagination.
AntipodeanSF supports the ASFF
Please consider joining the Australian Science Fiction Foundation, a prime supporter and promoter of speculative fiction down-under.
Coming In Issue 287
Celts All
By Bryan Keon-Cohen
Back From the Dead
By Natasha O'Connor
First Contact
By Harris Tobias
I Am The First Law
By Jessica Atkin
Just Fine
By Brian C. Mahon
Like
By Ed Errington
408 Kilometres Up
By Deborah Sheldon
Save the Bees
By Zachary Reisch
The Dollhouse
By Kevin J Phyland
The Frog in the Well
By Roger L Wang
The Monk...He's Poor
By Tony Owens
Scifaiku
By PS Cottier
Speculative Fiction
Downside-Up
ISSN 1442-0686
Online Since Feb 1998
AntiSF Radio Show
The AntipodeanSF Radio Show delivers audio from the pages of this magazine.
The weekly program features the stories from recently published issues, usually narrated by the authors themselves.
Listen to the latest episode now:
The AntipodeanSF Radio Show is also broadcast on community radio, 2NVR, 105.9FM every Saturday evening at 8:30pm.
You can find every broadcast episode online here: http://antisf.libsyn.com
Niven's Law: There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.