Fred Saberhagen boasts not only an exceptionally cool authorial moniker but also stands as a luminary in science fiction, chiefly owing to his creation of one of the genre’s most mysterious, notorious, and impactful adversaries—The Berserkers.
A prolific American science fiction and fantasy writer, Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007) left an indelible mark on the genre. His notable contributions include the renowned “Berserker” series, featuring self-replicating robotic warships with a singular mission to annihilate all life in the cosmos. Additionally, Saberhagen reimagined the classic vampire archetype in a contemporary context with his “Dracula” series, introducing the iconic character of Dracula. Renowned for his imaginative storytelling and inventive approaches to traditional science fiction and fantasy themes, Saberhagen’s legacy endures.
In the scorching desert heat, a spirited delivery man ventures into the vast emptiness, unaware of the horrifying fate that awaits him. With his present cargo tightly secured, he has no inkling that within its confines lay a mystery too gruesome to comprehend. And then, as the cargo is unveiled, a ghastly truth is revealed – a man-eating beast, more sinister than any nightmare, lurks behind those timber slates. The desert becomes an arena of terror, where life and death hang in the balance.
Left trapped in a bone-chilling dilemma, his every move determines his own survival. The stakes had never been higher, and the desert bears witness to a harrowing battle for survival, as the hunter becomes the hunted, and fear carves its path amidst the arid wasteland.
This horror sci-fi story is part one of the series, The Sell Outs, based on the short story.
It could sound like a clique stating my first ever science fiction read was Isaac Asimov back in the late ’70s, but this may have been unavoidable. This guy was an iconic American writer and professor who dominated the genre for half a century. He even boasted he was the “Best Science Writer” backed up by none other than Arthur C. Clarke. They had agreed with each other, negotiated as they shared a cab in New York, the so-called “Clarke–Asimov Treaty of Park Avenue”.
The treaty stipulated that Asimov would always proclaim Clarke as the greatest science fiction writer in the world, with himself as runner-up, and Clarke would similarly proclaim Asimov as the best science writer, with himself as runner-up.
Historiography (or Historiology) is a term that refers to the study of historical writing and its methods of interpretation. In science fiction, historiography plays a significant role in exploring the complexities of the past, present and future of a story.
Three days. That’s all it took to go from amazement and wonder to sheer terror and paranoia. Waking up each day to find that there are two of you does that to a person, I guess.
I wasn’t surprised when ‘it’ happened.
My brain struggled to cope with the reality presented in front of me. One moment, I’m thoughtlessly walking into the bathroom, next I’m confronting a naked stranger gazing into the vanity mirror, holding scissors and a blowdryer, perplexed as I was. Recognition came slowly, due to the fact I knew my face from a reflective surface’s point of view, or from a camera’s perspective. This life-sized version of me seemed off; wrong even.
The other self, understood what I was, having the advantage of studying me while I was asleep. Whatever interdimensional travel this was, there was no evidence of any portal. Did they find themselves in a world that was almost identical to their own? Or was it me? Either way, the only difference in our immediate existence was that there were now two of us, standing before each other’s alternate selves, staring back at each other with equal parts curiosity and disbelief.
That first day was spent revelling in awe as we looked at ourselves from what we both agreed was another dimension.
“I have been,” I began explaining, “hearing voices ever since I was a toddler. I believed then it was my invisible twin brother until I realized much later the voice was you, another me, from some other place.”
They replied, “When I woke up next to you it was like a dream had somehow turned into reality. I know you have been dreaming about this too. We are the one person. What I dream, you dream.”
I had always wondered what his life would be like if he had made different choices or taken different paths. Now, standing face to face with his alternate self, he finally had the chance to find out.
“You first,” I said.
“What difference does it make?” answered the other me. “This room is exactly the same. My clothes are here. Everything is exactly the same as I left them before went to sleep. Nothing is different from the time I went dosing off. Our timelines are the same. Unless you see anything that’s changed.”
“You’re assuming I’m in your timeline.”
“Am I in yours?”
“I see no point of divergence.”
“Neither do I.”
Our two selves spent hours talking about our lives and experiences, comparing notes on everything from our careers to our relationships. We discovered that we were more alike than we had ever imagined, despite living in different dimensions. Our memories were exactly the same.
As the second night wore on, the other me realized, “I think it is time for you to return home. I’m never going to forget this experience and that it has changed me forever, but this can’t go on. How can this work?”
“Can you go back?” I ask.
“No. I can’t see how.”
“Then how am I supposed to go? Which one of us is in the wrong dimension?”
“Maybe, this is not an inter-dimensional thing. Maybe it’s a mental illness?”
“I’ve thought about that. Been thinking of it the whole time.”
“Me too,” I confess.
“No, shit.”
Madness would be a relief. It would make sense. The voices in my head. The premonitions. The lucid dreams. “Let’s test this.”
“How?”
By morning, I directed my other self out to the kitchen. I put water to boil and opened the refrigerator. “Go get milk.”
“That would prove what?”
“From the neighbour.”
The other me seemed to understand and headed out. By the time I set a pair of cups and saucers, mix the instant coffee with hot water, and let it cool, my doppelganger returned with a bottle of milk.
After we pour in the milk, we both sit and take a sip.
“Return the milk,” said my other self. “She offered pancakes.”
I understood I needed to reciprocate the motion, so I took another sip, picked up the bottle and headed out of my apartment to the retired nurse who lived directly underneath me.
She opened her door and smiled, holding the plate of freshly fried pancakes. “I insist,” she said.
I swapped the milk for the plate and thanked her. When I headed back and confronted my other self with the goods, they were not impressed.
“What? Not proof enough?”
“I don’t know. Should we both go downstairs and ask if she has any syrup?”
The idea horrified me. “Do you realise what kind of attention this would draw? My life, our lives would be turned upside down. Can you imagine the hysteria this would cause?”
“We can say we’re twins.”
“Who’s going to buy that? My family? Yours? We’ll be a freak show. We are two. The same one person, but two bodies. Identical. Mirrored. Cloned.”
“We can say we are clones.”
“There’s no such technology.”
“Hear me out,” I had an idea. “We could use this situation to raise money for developing the technology. We can show investors proof of concept.”
“Who would be the clone?”
“When that thought entered my mind, it killed the mood, but if we…”
“Pretty soon you too will be thinking about how such an enterprise will end badly for both of us. The prospect of revealing our little miracle frightens you as much as me.”
Which one of us was the clone? I thought and felt a sense of dread for having met myself from another dimension if indeed it was that.
“Here’s an idea. We could take turns interacting with our family and the rest of the world. One of us would rest or pursue other interests, the other would go down and live the day.”
“How will it work?”
You quickly came up with the idea. “The ‘plan’ is that one of us should focus on the menial tasks and the other on life choice endeavours. We agree on a rotation system. One week you, one week me.”
“We could hide our secret, but for how long?”
I wondered how long this was going to last. Was this a temporary phenomenon, or something permanent?
On day three there were signs of trouble.
No divergence manifested so far. We both spoke the same. We both behaved the same until I noticed my other self growing less agreeable.
“I don’t think we should share the same lover.”
“We are not currently seeing anybody.” It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with the sentiment, nor was it evidence of a dramatic divergence, but this was not a topic I would ever bring to mind.
“Still, we should pursue different partners. Less awkward that way.”
“That sounds like a brilliant idea, but how are you going to fund any of this?”
“We.”
“How are we going to fund this lifestyle, with one job? Managing the household is one thing, between the two of us, we can manage, but social expenses, luxury purchases, who is going to own what?”
“We can both go to work. That’s two incomes.”
“Not at the same job.”
It dawned on me. “I’m not looking for another job.”
“Why should I go find something else?”
I was going to suggest we coin toss for it but held my idea back. I’m sure my other self thought it, so I didn’t bother. There was always going to be a complication, some convolution, to make life more complicated and more convoluted. I didn’t know how I would feel if my replica got a better job than I had or got into a relationship before I did, or a better-looking partner. It was a strange jealousy, its main subject being basically me.
By midday, we had ceased talking. Taking refuge in separate parts of the apartment. Distrust set in, because if I were suffering from an outbreak of envy, guaranteed my other self was going through the same thing.
I sat on the couch and watched content on the television taking my mind off the conundrum for an hour or so until a new idea struck me. I hurried to the bedroom where I had been hearing my double rummaging around.
“What if we both move out? No coin toss. We both can sacrifice equally. Two lives, same person.”
As I enter, I feel a presence behind me and a stabbing pain in my lower back. I twist around but my feet trip over the shower curtain that had been placed over the carpet. Falling sideways, I hit the floor, the puncture paralysing my legs.
“Why?” I cried toward the counterpart holding the scissors. I tried to pull myself up, but my hands slipped on the blood-soaked plastic.
I look down at myself bleeding to death, reluctant to elaborate. I knew we both understood what was going on. We both have been looking for it the entire time. Fission of the timeline had indeed occurred, and with that, there had to exist since this divergence, an inevitable differentiation between the two of us.
When science fiction attempts to get serious about how to best represent the human colonisation of the solar system, films like Ad Astra (2019) establish free enterprise as the plot devises for the story. With commercial flights to the moon, a Luna base that looks like an airport on Earth, fast food facilities, piracy, and private space laboratories…
…The future of space travel is business.
No human society is going to get off-Earth and colonise the solar system without a powerful driver propelling it. Scientific curiosity can raise billions of dollars to send robots out there to learn things, but inducement is a far greater and more effective driver known to mankind. I’m not talking about a business proposal that sends humans to Mars for a reality TV program, space-faring humans require more of a legal framework, or better, the lack of one, to get it going.
One doesn’t simply just go to Mars.
Ad Astra (2019)
Japanese space startup, iSpace, has long-term plans to send humans to the moon. To get to that point, the company aims to make the endeavour profitable by launching basic small-scale missions to the moon’s surface to collect regolith samples… and sell them.
But NASA paying just $5000 for the samples is not the end game.
iSpace is also planning to launch satellites around the moon’s orbit to provide high-resolution images of the surface. To achieve any of this, the Japanese government passed a law granting iSpace a licence to prospect for, extract and use various space resources on the Moon. Why do companies need permission to exploit space?
Well, there’s a whole bunch of Space Treaties that block any determination about who owns the Moon, or any other space resource, and stifle any entity, corporate or otherwise from exploiting it. According to The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) webpage…
Each of the treaties stresses the notion that outer space, the activities carried out in outer space and whatever benefits might be accrued from outer space should be devoted to enhancing the well-being of all countries and humankind, with an emphasis on promoting international cooperationUNOOSA
Ad Astra (2019)
The 1966 Outer Space Treaty states that “outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”.
Another is the 1979 Moon Treaty, which states “the orderly and safe use of the natural lunar resources with an equitable sharing by all state parties in the benefits derived from those resources”.
Here is a summary of what The United Nations has signed up most countries for.
Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies
Ad Astra (2019)
Article 1.
Essentially puts forth egalitarian access to all celestial bodies. Everyone is free to explore unhindered for the benefit of all nations. You are allowed to go to any celestial body and do whatever you want, but it’s still vague whether you can capitalise on anything you find.
Article 2
You can not claim sovereignty on any celestial territory.
Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.UNOOSA
There is no ambiguity here. I wonder what trouble in the future this will cause.
Article 3
Determines that you are bound to international laws and to the promotion of peace and cooperation.
Article 4
No weapons in orbit or on the moon or anywhere. Sure, you can be military personnel, but no weapons.
Ad Astra (2019)
Article 5
Astronauts are to be protected and afforded help and assistance in the event of an accident. Astronauts must help other astronauts in space. And, astronauts must report any “phenomena they discover in outer space, which could constitute a danger.”
Article 6
Governments are responsible for what their national corporations do in outer space and whether or not they are compliant.
Article 7
Get liability insurance. If you launch or attempt to land a spacecraft, and it crashes in an other another country, you are liable.
Article 8
You have legal jurisdiction over whatever you launch into space.
Article 9
Do not bring back “extraterrestrial matter” that can contaminate the Earth, and do not pollute space with experiments that can harm other space farers.
Article 10
“Promote international cooperation” by letting less techy countries come and observe your endeavours.
Article 11
If you’re planning a mission into space, you have to tell everybody what you are doing.
Article 12
“Reciprocity” You have to allow rivals into your base, craft or any installation you have in space. They have to do the same.
Ad Astra (2019)
Article 13
If you have an issue with another astronaut from another country; or countries, take it up with the “appropriate” authorities, or complain to other member nations of the treaty, and get them to gang up on the offending party.
In other words, doesn’t look like OOSA is able to intervene.
Articles 14 to 17 deal with the how and who can amend, and other housekeeping rules.
There are five U.N. accords with the addition of the “1968 Rescue Agreement”, The “1972 Liability Convention” and the “1975 Registration Convention”.
The Artemis Accords
The United States via NASA has recently set up a separate non-binding multilateral arrangement with the space agencies of 21 other countries. The Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon by 2025, and then to Mars. The countries who have signed up to this accord pledge to enable laws that endorse and enable their public and private agencies to extract and use space resources.
The US has introduced laws giving American companies the right to the resources they extract in space, the moon or any other celestial body. Britain, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates have since passed similar legislation, same as Japan.
But not Russia.
Ad Astra (2019)
They are sticking to the old U.N. rules, I’m guessing because they are not ready to compete in space with the likes of the West’s private sector companies. They call it a land grab, which in reality it is. Treaties, accords and agreements are a subterfuge for holding national and corporate powers back for as long as possible. Participants agree to these terms so they don’t get left behind. Just like in the case of the Antarctic Treaty, nobody wants a free for all. Space colonisation is very expensive, so if a free for all occurs, and you can’t afford it, you will miss out.
Once Russia feels confident with its public and private sectors, then Roscosmos will change its tune about any egalitarian notions of common heritage and of space belonging to everyone.
China and India too.
Ad Astra (2019)
The conquest of space will be no different to the conquest of the new world.
Profits will drive the engines, whether this is powered by space tourism, reality TV programs, or mining resources. The Industrial Military Complex will also be a major player, no matter how hard these treaties try to avoid the militarization of space. Treaties are only worth the paper they’re printed on, or the PDF they’re documented on.
The future of space travel will be messy, ad-hoc and business as usual, just as human affairs have been for the past ten thousand years.
Devious16 wondered why time existed…. if time existed at all.
He attached the power pack to the modified rotary assault rifle. He switched it on, pressed the trigger and the disk above the weapon hissed, spinning at two thousand and a half meters per second. He saw intense yellows and reds swirling across his blurred vision. He saw blues and greens turn to grey.
The sandstorm above had been raging for three days with no end in sight. So intense, the winds toppled vehicles, trucks and all. They eroded away the road leading in and out of the mine, destroying the ramp, even the super trucks couldn’t scale the man-made canyon.
Workers have become sick. They had fallen weak; their skin had become yellow, not like jaundice, but splotchy yellow pigmentation. According to the doc, whatever this pestilence was, it wasn’t infectious.
“The mine’s sitting atop a massive motherlode of rare-earth metals,” said Gillian as we both descended down the deep crevasse. “Erosion didn’t create this cave .”
I noticed no smooth surface, just jagged, sharp edges. “Then what made this?”
“It’s a fracture. A lot of energy caused it. Maybe the impact of a meteor hitting the Earth all those millions of years ago.”
“Meteor?”
“This mineral lode originated from space.”
“What? Are we dealing with alien forces?”
Gillian frowned and continued rappelling further down the dark rift. The cave system was discovered by workers as they were excavating the fourth parallel tunnel. They discovered a solid tungsten deposit, lots of artefacts…
…and the cave.
When we measured the chasm with the laser, we failed to hit a bottom, so Gillian suggested we go down seventy metres, the limit of our equipment. What she was looking for, down in the darkness, I couldn’t guess. Evidence? Something to explain the sequence of events that had occurred above ground and below.
The storm.
The sickness.
The loss of communication.
Everyone’s sleep is affected by demonic nightmares.
The miners had found artefacts. Tungsten skulls the size of one’s fist.
Supernatural?
Nothing made sense…
We reach the end of the line and dangled in the darkness for a moment.
“What now?” I asked her.
“I’m going to vomit,” she answered and did so.
I pointed the flashlight at her and waited for her to recover. “Everything okay?”
“Do you feel it?”
I did. Beyond my hyper-anxiety, my intense urge to panic, I felt…
…weightlessness.
What was vertical, now seemed horizontal. “What’s happening?”
Gillian swung to the side and placed her feet on the wall. She unfastened herself and stood, perpendicular to me.
I did the same. It took me longer to achieve balance, but when I did, up and down no longer existed. “Holy shit.”
The ability to walk lessened my phobia somewhat. It gave me a sense that I could escape. But the endless darkness, which not even the industrial flashlight could breach, hampered my enforced calmness.
“Let’s press on,” said Gillian.
“Are you sure?”
“More than ever. Something’s definitely down here. Enough to distort gravity.” She then looked at me. “Plus, what choice do we have?”
Trekking proved more difficult than the rope, due to the rough, uneven passage made of pure, solid wolframite. The further we progressed, the heavier our bodies became. The cave eventually evened out and widened, spilling into a cavern. As we walked through the darkness, it felt as if we were ascending.
“Hand me a flare,” ordered Gillian. She took the candle out of my hand and ignited it. The cavern lit up, the tungsten ore reflecting the brilliant purple glow. Gillian seemed stunned by what she saw. I really couldn’t blame her.
We were atop a hill at the centre of the cavern. A temple-like structure stood at the summit. Made of wolfram, its pillared design seemed organic – biomechanical. What struck me as more insane, was the other temple above, on the cavern’s ceiling, opposite our position, separated from us by a vast black void. A great cubical chain linked both temples. This time, the mineralogist in me, recognised the iron-ferrite.
“What the hell,” gasped Gillian.
We stood at the base of the chain and looked up at the other temple. “This is way above my pay grade.”
“We have to go up,” she insisted.
“And achieve what? Whatever this is, we are not equipped to deal with it. We should go back and tell the doc…”
“What? Tell him what?”
“When the storm subsides, we could get the word out.” I pointed to the chain. “THIS requires a multi-governmental response. Me and you can’t solve this.”
“The sickness causes cannibalism.”
“What?”
“The doc didn’t want everyone to know.”
“How does he know that?”
“The B Crew have eaten most of the engineers, so yeah, Doc may be onto something with his diagnosis.”
That’s when I felt a new kind of fear, something I’d never experienced before, enough to drive me up that cube-link chain. Halfway up, I expected gravity to shift again, but that didn’t eventuate. The anti-temple was, in fact, built upside down. Spiral stairs awaited us and we both ascended quietly, without uttering a word.
We exited into another, grander temple. Biomechanical sculptures adorned the hall, which opened out into a street.
An urban street.
The sky was black, broken only by slivers of red cloud. The air was cold and putrid. Even a chemical engineer like me couldn’t place the toxicity. But the urban landscape around us, even the soundscape, was unmistakable.
Home.
“Where is this?” spoke Gillian.
“Downtown, somewhere.”
“But where?” She walked across a street bordered by factory and apartment lots, lit by the garish light coming from the lamp posts and the neon glow of a late-night grocery store. Gillian stepped towards the entrance, intending to go inside. I rushed after her and followed as she pushed through the glass, sticker-riddled door.
We found nobody at the counter so we wandered the aisles, looking at the plethora of goods on the shelves, not one label was recognisable, and none of the writing was familiar. In the freezer section, somebody was busy stacking shelves. I should say ‘something’ because this clerk was far from human. With its orange-red flaky skin, duel tiny horns protruding from its temple, another pair from its jaw, and arcing shoulders, this ugly demon paused what it was doing and looked at us with yellow eyes.
Gillian shrieked and ran, pulling me along. Enduring the same terror as she felt, I complied. We ran out into the night and fled into the shadows. The one thing that struck me about this demon was, that it seemed surprised and afraid…
There are many benefits to writing short stories. Writers do it to practice and develop their style of storytelling, and it also allows them to explore singular ideas, concepts and themes. The narratives are easy to control, the outcomes have less room for error, and you can get your story out quickly.
Nothing builds intricate worlds like the attention to detail given to the story’s geography. What makes a setting compelling is the effort that goes into creating elaborate planets that are logical and familiar in terms of geology, history, climate and all that encompasses the geographical nature of the fictional world.
The more variety and complexity a world has, the further it enhances the other elements in the story. Physical environments can affect the plot and character, and determine what social organizations, culture and belief systems populate the place.
Variance is important. You can’t just have a planet depicted as having single forms of environments. Entirely desertic, or forested planets make no sense. Unless it’s an airless or complete snowball world, any grassland planets, swamp planets, ocean planets, and even a completely urbanized planet packed would have different temperate zones. They would be colder at the poles, and hotter at the equator. Mountain ranges and oceans would make a difference. And if tidally locked, the climate should provide enough variation to create a complex ecological system.
