July 20, 2011 marks the forty-second anniversary of the first moon landing, and July 21, 2011 marks the touchdown of the final flight of NASA’s space shuttle fleet as Atlantis returned to Earth. There have been many milestones in human space exploration, from Sputnik becoming the first artificial satellite to Yuri Gagarin's first orbit to the construction of the International Space Station, but it's easy to argue that nothing was more stunning than human beings first setting foot on another world. In honor of that forty-second anniversary, this month's theme will be “going beyond the boundaries of Earth.” And with a tip of the hat to Douglas Adams and the number 42, we’ll even get goofy with a couple of them.

“Is Anybody Home?”
Sci-Fi

By David M. Fitzpatrick

We searched the solar system, but found no advanced life.

We went to the next solar system, and found the same. We reported this back to Earth.

We scoured a hundred solar systems before we found evidence of an advanced civilization—but it had died out millions of years before. We transmitted everything we found back home.

We scoured ten thousand more, occasionally finding clues of long-dead civilizations. Always, we sent back massive amounts of data to be preserved forever, and let the rest of us know how it was going.

Then we found sentient beings. They were bipedal, roughly humanoid, not unlike us—but troglodytes, a million years of evolution away from being truly like us. We reported back and kept going.

We searched the entire Galaxy, and eventually found three races near to us in development. The first were carnivorous and tried to devour us. The second believed any beings from outside their world were demons, and tried to destroy us. The third advanced a million years beyond us. They talked to us only long enough to tell us the Universe was mostly devoid of anyone like us, and practically without anyone like them. Then they bade us leave their world. We reported this, too.

We ventured out across the Universe with our jump ships, extending our lives repeatedly. We sent robot ships in different directions and met up with them later. Always, we reported.

We never found anyone, not really. Races long dead, civilizations long fallen; races too barbaric or too alien to befriend; people far too advanced to deal with us, or anyone else. Finally, we surrendered: The Universe held nothing like us, so we were virtually alone. Saddened, we returned home, after a hundred thousand years of exploration.

When we got there, there was nobody left. They’d long ago died out, leaving a barren world.

We settled in and waited for someone to find us.

“Change Is Tough”
Sci-Fi

By David M. Fitzpatrick

Jim and Bill found their seats just before the robot umpire announced “Play ball!” The ballpark was encased beneath a huge glass dome on the surface of the Moon. It hosted a million people and it was a full house.

“I love this game,” Bill said to Jim. “It sure has changed a lot, though.”

That comment stuck in Jim’s mind throughout the whole game. The pair watched as the pitcher took counts all the way to four balls and three strikes for all five outs in the top of the first. Then they watched as the second team hit collectively for the cycle—a single, a double, a triple, a quadruple, a quintuple, and a six-bagger home run—in the middle of the first. In the bottom of the first, the third team loaded all five bases and hit a Grander Slam.

Bill’s comment ate at Jim, in fact, all the way through the bottom of the regulation twelfth inning. No extra innings; it was a blowout, with the winning team circling the half-mile of bases to plate six more runs, while the other two teams’ combined twenty outfielders overloaded their jetpacks chasing balls slapped around everywhere in the weak lunar gravity.

When it was over, and Bill and Jim’s team had won, they headed out to the parking dome to Jim’s spacecraft. Jim turned to Bill and said, “So I don’t get what you said earlier—about how the game has changed so much. There have been no changes in the past few years.”

“I’m talking when I was a kid,” Bill said. “Ever since they introduced that damned Designated Sub-Pitcher rule, the game hasn’t been the same. It ruined it. Then you have all sixteen leagues on Earth, the Moon, Mars, and Venus, and some of them use the DSP and some don’t. Makes no sense.”

Jim nodded. “I guess I see your point. After all, it’s the Great Terran Pastime—they shouldn’t mess with it. But, I don’t know… change is tough. Maybe in a hundred years, people will accept it.”

Bill scoffed. “Never! Nobody will accept messing with a cultural phenomenon.”

“Invasion Plan”
Sci-Fi

By David M. Fitzpatrick

The silver flying saucer landed in Jeb's cornfield on a Tuesday morning and flattened the young stalks. Jeb climbed off his yellow and green John Deere tractor as the ramp lowered from the saucer and the two jelly-bodied blobs jiggled out.

"Take us to your leader," one of them demanded.

So Jeb led them back to the house and into the kitchen, where he presented them to his wife.

When Betsy saw them, she began screaming, and immediately began whacking at the purple blobs with her broom. Jeb tried to stop her, but she just kept whacking them until they were a pair of gelatinous puddles on the floor.

“Now why’d you have to do and do that?” Jeb cried out. “Those were aliens from another planet, done landed in the cornfield.”

She thought for a moment. “You know, Jeb, they sure do smell dee-licious.”

***

As it turned out, the aliens were pretty good, lightly sautéed in a pan with onions and hot sauce. Jeb ate one, and Betsy ate the other. They were enjoying their full bellies when the alien entities they’d eaten took control of their brains.

“That was far easier than we had anticipated,” Alien Betsy said. “I thought we’d have to stun them and climb inside their defecation portals. But now we have them, and can conquer this world!”

“Yes!” cried Alien Jeb. “A great future lies ahead of us. From this rural hideaway, we shall learn all we can about their civilization. When the fleet arrives, we’ll be prepared to rule the humans!”

***

That evening, Alien Betsy was looking through a dusty old set of encyclopedias on the living-room bookcase and looked up at Alien Jeb. “We may have erred. It seems humans only live for a short while—perhaps seventy to one hundred years.”

“That is not good,” said Alien Jeb. “The fleet won’t arrive for a very long while.”

“Perhaps we should return to the spaceship and fly back home,” Alien Betsy said.

“We’d never fit,” Alien Jeb replied. “And your human squashed us well, so we’re stuck in these bodies. Which means we’re stuck on Earth, stuck on this farm, stuck living as humans until the fleet arrives.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do until then?” Alien Betsy said.

***

Twenty years later, the fading sign by the farm announced that passersby could see a real live UFO for a dollar. Alien Jeb was out tending the fields while Alien Betsy took dollars.

A young couple came back from the cornfield, angry and complaining. “That’s the fakest-looking UFO ever,” the young man said. “I’ve seen better in the movies!”

The couple stormed back to their car and sped off. Alien Betsy sighed.

“A thousand years never seemed like such a long time before,” she said.

“Where No Man Has Gone Before”
Sci-Fi, Parody

By David M. Fitzpatrick

Stellar Fleet Command hailed the United Fleet Ship Proposition, and Commodore Tames K. Jirk was on the bridge when the call came in. He was whispering sweet nothings in the ear of a giggly blond yeoman who was setting back women’s equality at least two hundred years, and planning his move under her skimpy skirt. “This is Jirk,” he said as a face faded in on the viewscreen. ”Admiral Robbinderry, what can I do for you?”

“Enough with the act, Jirk,” Robbinderry snapped, glaring across the light years at the dashing spaceship commander. “I know you bedded both my daughters, my wife, and my mother—so don’t play dumb with me.”

“No playing,” Jirk said with a sly smile. “And you obviously haven’t spoken with your grandmother lately.”

Robbinderry’s eyes widened, and he spat out a series of angry curses the ship’s censors skillfully bleeped out before regaining his composure. “You have no shame, Jirk. All of Stellar Fleet knows you’ll take any woman to bed, no matter how alien. Blue ones with antennae, green ones with three breasts—even flying purple ones with one eye and one horn.”

“Ah, yes,” Jirk recalled. “She was special.”

“Well, that’s why we need you. There’s a tense situation on Beeta Vulva Six, where the Queen of the Cervixians refuses to sign the peace treaty unless she is pleasured by a representative from the United Confederation of planets. Clearly, we needed someone who would bed anything, and naturally we thought of you.”

“Naturally,” Jirk said, admiring his dashing face on the inset image in the lower corner of the viewscreen. “You know I’ll do whatever I have to for the Confederation.”

“But you have to pleasure her to her satisfaction,” Robbinderry said. “You must continue until her sexual cycle is complete. Are you up for it?”

“I’m sure I will be... up,” Jirk said with a smile.

#

On Beeta Vulva Six, Jirk beamed into the queen’s throne room, and felt the color drain from his face, heard the alert beacon on his quincorder go berserk, and felt everything in his body wilt.

“Ah, Confederation human!” the queen roared. “They say you’re the best!”

The queen was nine feet tall and had fifteen writhing tentacles. Three grinning mouths smiled, dripping green slime. Yellow slime oozed from her five nipples. Brown slime squirted from a gaping hole between her two lower tentacles. The hole was obviously her womanhood.

“Oh, my,” Jirk said. “All right, duty is duty.”

He took a deep breath and dropped his drawers. He approached the queen gallantly and found his way to the brown-dripping hole.

“What the hell is that you’re sticking in my ear?” the queen cried out in alarm.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, backing away. “I apologize, Your Majesty, but your anatomy is... unfamiliar to me. Tell me where the males of your species insert their reproductive organs to provide you with pleasure.”

“Oh, they don’t insert anything,” she said, and one writhing tentacle grew longer and fatter, snaking toward him. “The females do the inserting.”

“Ah,” said Jirk. “Yes. Duty is duty.”

***

Admiral Robbinderry relaxed in his office on the space station in orbit about Jupiter. He kicked back with a beer and celebrated his payback on Commodore Jirk for banging his whole damn family. Admiral Majel was with him.

“That Jirk--he will indeed bed anything,” Majel said. “I admit, I had doubts he’d do it. It probably helped that he hadn’t seen her first.”

“The only thing stronger than his sex drive is his sense of duty and honor,” Robbinderry said and guzzled back his suds.

“Once he saw her, and knowing how long the queen mates for, I’m surprised he continued,” Majel said.

Robbinderry smiled. “Who says I told him she mates for five straight days?”

Majel burst out laughing. Robbinderry drank some more.

***

Five days later, the joke was on them. Jirk had the time of his life.

“Shuffling On This Immortal Coil”
Sci-Fi

The Fanatics fought like crusaders against us, and we fought back as if our lives depended on it—because they did. My wife, Heidi, was a believer, although not a Fanatic, and we’d always respected each other’s values. That changed when my team achieved the most important breakthrough in human history.

We began by creating artificial cells to replace biological cells. Using nanobots, we were soon converting organs into synthetics that worked like the originals. And it worked with brain cells. They behaved like biological neurons, growing axons to link with other neurons, sprouting dendrite tendrils to receive electrical impulses from others. They grow microtubules and neurofibrils, and when synaptic vesicles attach to receptors, they work like the real thing—but they never die. Install them in artificial bodies, and you have everlasting life.

After thousands of lab tests, we flawlessly upgraded a rat’s brain. The rat’s body would age normally, but its brain would last forever. We could kill the rat and toss its brain in a box for a hundred years; its consciousness would quickly go dark without an energy supply, but the brain wouldn’t die. A little jolt of electricity, and it would be awake and aware again.

The next phase was a dog we’d named Shyla. We injected the nanobots and, while Shyla was wide awake, they converted her brain cells into the improved variety. When the process was complete, every brain cell had been converted—but, fundamentally, nothing was different. It wasn’t a brain replication or memory clone—Shyla’s consciousness had remained consistent and aware throughout the nine-hour process, so this was the same dog as when we’d started.

This project had been about immortality, and about preserving the consciousnesses of those who underwent the conversion. We didn’t want to replicate ourselves. We wanted to convert ourselves and live forever.

The Fanatics did not approve. They lobbied the world government to outlaw our work, because humans couldn’t possibly be allowed to decide their own fates. They believed in eternal souls and deities, and thought everyone should.

Heidi had never argued my work until then. “You know I believe,” she said to me. “I’m not a Fanatic, but… I see their point. I think immortality is morally wrong.”

“This is a big difference of opinion to mention now, after I’ve worked on this for twenty years—since before we met,” I argued.

“I guess I’ve decided that I don’t want go to an afterlife where you’ll never be,” she said.

And so the rift was created. I didn’t stop my work, and we grew apart. Heidi became more focused on her faith.

***

Many religionists embraced our work and upgraded their brains and bodies. We called only the fanatics “Fanatics”—not because of their religion, but because they believed we should follow their desires.

Heidi’s faith deepened, and soon she was a Fanatic. The day I converted my brain and began constructing a synthetic body, she divorced me, and soon became the poster child for the Fanatics’ crusade against us. What better choice than the ex-wife of the man who helped bring such a tragedy upon humanity?

***

Twenty years later, Heidi was on her deathbed. The cancer was relentless and, true to Fanatic form, she refused life-saving treatment. I went to her and begged her to let me help.

“I can’t become like you,” she said, and she looked disgusted at my synthetic form. “My husband died twenty years ago, when he converted himself into you.”

“I’m the same person I’ve always been,” I said. I reached for her hand and held it, looked into her confused eyes. “Let me save you.”

She thought about it for a few moments, and then pulled hand away. “I can’t turn my back on my god and my afterlife,” she said.

I felt helpless. “I never stopped loving you.”

She looked away. “I never stopped loving you, either. But you’ve been gone for twenty years.”

***

She died the following week. That was a thousand years ago.

I’ve upgraded my brain again with smaller cells, shrinking it dramatically, making room for more growth. I’ll need it for the next millennium, as I continue stuffing it full of new memories and fresh experiences of all the wonderful and exciting things consciousness and existence have to offer.

We live on various planets and moons, because life support isn’t an issue. We experience things no biohuman could, and that includes so many unimaginable things of beauty and awe. You haven’t lived until you’ve surfed the rings of Saturn on a rocketboard, hiked Olympus Mons without an envirosuit, swum in the oceans of Europa, and made love on Titania as Uranus shines blue-white in the sky.

There are still Fanatics on Earth. Sometimes, their children grow up to believe as they do, but usually those children weep for the loss of their loved ones, and become determined not to do the same to their children. Some die, remaining as just dusty memories. It pains me to imagine their essences lost forever by choice.

Bodies are just vessels; it’s our minds that matter, and what we experience with them. And most of us wish to experience as much as we can for as long as we can. Life and the universe is just too extraordinary for me to simply lie down and accept oblivion.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.