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June/July 2009
Vol. VII No. 6   ISSN: 1545-3650
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AlienSkin Magazine®
Published Bi-Monthly Online

 
 
Up
Already Dead
The Angry Radio
Barrier
Bearing Witness
Bent
Colonizers
The Color of Escape
Concerns of a Single parent
A Jury of his Peers
Liable to be Viable
Practice Makes Perfect
New Windows on the World
Useless Beauty

~ ~ Snowbound ~ ~ by Phil Adams, Ohio
Deep snow. Endless blizzard swirl. Safe Chalet ravaged. Yeti's fleshy snack screams in vain.

 

~ ~ Memento Lost ~ ~ by K. A. Patterson, Pennsylvania
Gray ore pulses. Tarnished fob, foreign chevron paste, polished hums ancient code to space.
 

 
 


Featured Fiction
Bearing Witness

by Alan Rice Osborn  ©2009

"Look."

"No.  I won't. I can't."

"You must."

"What difference will it make?"

"We have to record—"

"Record?  You're recording this?"

"Yes."

"Whatever for?"

"Because—"

"That's an asteroid.  It's made of nickel-iron.  It weighs ten trillion tons. When it hits, everything ends.  It doesn't care if you watch!"

"I know."

"We're out of air in three days.  By then, we won't even be able to see the surface.  Dust will block the sun for a year.  Sulfuric acid will ride the stratospheric winds for decades.  Every species of animal bigger than a rat will be dead.  We can't land. And you're taking pictures?"

"And watching."

"Why?  Please, tell me why?"

"It's all I can do.  All anyone can do."

"I can't."

"Sit beside me.  Look.  It's called 'bearing witness.'  It's what the living owe the dead."

"It won't make any difference!"

"No.  But it's what we have to do."

~ Alan Rice Osborn, California  ©2009

Alan has been teaching Geography at San Diego State University for the past 10 years.  He has been published in Dead of Night Magazine, Andre Norton's Catfantastic IV anthology with collaborating writers Heather Gladney and Don Clayton.

 
 

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