On The Nature of War

by Jonathan Wood

When the Elephantmen came they brought war on their heels. Their tusks tore through men. They wielded cannons like toys, fired shot that ripped through Kevlar like tissue. They understood guerrilla tactics, their skin color natural camouflage in the urban jungle man had made for himself.

But the Elephantmen were few, and men were many. Through sheer weight of numbers mankind forced a stalemate. Both sides were diminished, bloody, tattered. And so went forth the leaders of each force, the man O’Connell and the Elephantman Atok. They were battle-scarred and proud, walking into no-man’s land in the cold white sun of the day.

Hard-liners on both sides did not want the deal to pass. Hard-liners on both sides sent squads to dispatch the leaders. But the O’Connell and Atok had not attained their positions without merit. Together they fought back, the two acting as one. O’Connell’s machine gun rattling, Atok’s great arm cannon destroying the cover their attackers hid behind. In the blood of their enemies, O’Connell and Atok found what they might otherwise have never located, brotherhood, understanding.

At the ceasefire declaration, Atok told mankind, “You will see that though we can never forget, we can forgive.”

And the Elephantmen did forgive, and they opened their borders, and gave beleagured mankind all the aid they could muster. They turned their great strength from destruction to building.

However, Atok saw that his people’s largess was not met in kind. So he went to O’Connell and said, “I believe we are friends, but now it seems our friendship is one-sided. My people will not be exploited once more.” And O’Connell assured him all was well, but time proved his promises empty and once more Atok returned. But where O’Connell may have expected anger he found only sadness, for Atok had forgiven man. And O’Connell knew he held back his hand, and the sadness in Atok’s stance only angered him.

O’Connell sent trucks into the Elephantmen camps. They promised aid, but held only men with guns, only death. And the men burst from the trucks, and they caught their ally unaware, and they killed, and they slaughtered, and they butchered. And man stood victorious in a war one side had not known it still fought. For O’Connell had not forgiven, and instead had lived in fear of the day he might forget to hate.

Made of Fail

by Luc Reid

After twelve years, the Gate, constructed on Peaks Island off the coast of Maine, was complete. The Cancrians had removed their spaceships from where they had been parked around Portland and Brunswick, explaining that their drive mechanisms would interfere with the Gate’s operation. We–everybody, I mean, the whole world–was watching when the First Lady, escorted by an honor guard of Marines and several of the tall, hunched Cancrians, stepped up to flip the switch.

And by “everyone,” I don’t just mean Americans: this had been a world effort. After the initial arguments, the raging debate, a feeling had gradually spread that the interstellar age really had dawned, and it was our destiny to enter it as a species. I doubt there were more than a few thousand people in the entire world who weren’t there in Portland or else glued to their TVs to see the Gate opened.

There had been speeches, you know, obviously. I’m not going to tell you there weren’t speeches. But who cares about the speeches? What could they say other than “Wow, we’re about to open a portal directly onto another populated planet! How cool is that? And scary. And sobering. Wow, people!” Not much. The speeches took up an hour and a half, but that’s all they said.

The First Lady stepped up to the control pedestal, and a deep, stomach-shaking whirr shook the world as it lit up automatically. She placed her hand on the receptor, and with a sound like angels gargling, the Gate opened, spilling light out onto the massive crowd. We looked through it and saw … Maine. There was a grinding noise. Something crackled, and all at once the lights on the unit went out. It was deathly quiet. The Gate had failed.

We were all stunned for a little while, so stunned that I think it was at least a few minutes before anyone realized that the Cancrians had snuck off somewhere. Where were they? The odd, shy, infinitely harmless-seeming Cancrians … what had happened to them? And why, when they clearly were technological geniuses, didn’t their gate work?

“Hey!” someone shouted (I later found out that he had been checking a Hawai’ian webcam on his Blackberry). “Where the hell is the Pacific Ocean?”