Lost Signals (56 page)

(STERN’S ATTORNEY)
 
: No further questions. Let us pass. Ladies and gentlemen, no further questions
 
!

***

The boss wants to make this all go away. But even if by some miracle Stern is able to save his company what
we’ve
I’VE done will never go away.

People
Innocent CHILDREN are dying.

Don’t know why it only affects the kids. All I know is, it’s MY fault.

It’s something in the CODE. Something that causes a glitch in their brains. Some kind of “fatal error” that shuts down the will to live after playing the game for more than a few hours.

I’ve tried to find my mistake. But I’m not as good as everyone said I was. The wunderkind is a fraud. I am a MURDERER.

Please God forgive me. I wish I never created that fucking game.

—note found in a spiral notebook in Darren McKay’s condo the day after his suicide

***

BILL OF LADING

DATE
 
: 11
 
/
 
29
 
/
 
94

SHIPPED FROM
 
: UltimaTech Entertainment

212 Bonham Avenue

Jakesboro, NC 28778

SHIPPED TO
 
: Polk County Solid Waste Disposal &

Recycling Center

884 Stone Mountain Rd.

Midnight, NC 28782

DESCRIPTION OF CARGO
 
: game cartridges

QUANTITY
 
: approx. 2,000,000 (two million)

COMMENTS
 
: destroy upon receipt

***

From
the Asheville Citizen-Times
—February 3, 1995
 
:

Authorities reported that an as-yet-unidentified shooter killed six people and wounded four others late yesterday at the offices of UltimaTech Entertainment in Jakesboro.

Early reports suggest that the suspect was a disgruntled employee, and that the victims were all members of upper management. One of the deceased, it has been confirmed, was the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Edmund W. Stern.

***

REVISED BILL OF LADING

DATE
 
: 12
 
/
 
01
 
/
 
94

SHIPPED FROM
 
: Stahl Transportation—Western NC Hub

442 Warren Avenue

Hendersonville, NC 28791

SHIPPED TO
 
: U.S. Department of Defense

Washington, DC

DESCRIPTION OF CARGO
 
: game cartridges

QUANTITY
 
: approx. 2,000,000 (two million)

COMMENTS
 
: contents are now property of U.S. government

***

From
U.S. Business Daily
–May 1, 1995
 
:

It was announced last week that UltimaTech Entertainment will cease operations at the end of this month. No official statement regarding reasons for the sudden closure was available at press time.

***

From
Paranoid Punks
(Internet podcast), Episode #113
 
:

CYNICAL STEVE
 
: By this time, Uncle Sam’s sporting a boner the size of the Washington Monument over
Galactic Recon.
Can’t wait to get his hands on it. What this programmer guy inadvertently created, it’s too valuable to end up in some landfill somewhere.

MISS RAVEN
 
: Brings to mind the MKUltra experiments from the ’60s that we talked about in Episode #100. Thirty years later Sam finally strikes gold, thanks to a
glitch in avideogame.

CYNICAL STEVE
 
: Fast forward a few months. People who used to work for UltimaTech—the ones who might have some clue what really went down
 
? They start dropping like flies. Some of them pull a Jimmy Hoffa and disappear altogether. Eventually, the only ones talking about
Galactic Recon
and what it did to the kids in that town were the loonies in the tinfoil hats. The conspiracy freaks.

MISS RAVEN
 
: The paranoid punks.

CYNICAL STEVE
 
: You know it.

***

From
Faded Dreams, Forgotten Places
 
: Exploring the Ghost Towns of America
by James L. Heatherly
 
:

Unlike similar communities that once flourished but were eventually left to the mercy of the elements, a walk through the desolate streets of Jakesboro, North Carolina gives one the impression that its citizens left suddenly. As I explored each residence, I was reminded of the Lost Colony of Roanoke
 
: I saw dusty tables set for supper, bathtubs drawn before bedtime now filled with stagnant green water, and children’s playthings rotting in weed-choked backyards. I stumbled upon one home where a dog had been chained to a tree then cruelly abandoned
 
; a small pile of bones lay at the edge of a cracked driveway as if Fido still waits for a family that will never return for him.

Jakesboro’s fate is one associated with bizarre urban legends and conspiracy theories. Such rumors and speculation will not be repeated here. Most likely, it was the demise of a once thriving software company that killed Jakesboro in the mid-1990s. Seventy percent of the town’s population was employed by said company
 
; seemingly overnight, several thousand residents lost their jobs and were forced to move elsewhere.

Today, the empty buildings that were once the company’s headquarters overlook the dead town like a weary parent doomed to gaze forever upon the repercussions of his past sins.

***

FROM
 
: U.S. DEPT OF JUSTICE, IN CONJUNCTION W
 
/
 
THE N.S.A.

OFFICIAL NOTICE

Re
 
: existing copies of
LOST SIGNALS

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
 
:

By order of the U.S. Government, all existing copies of the Perpetual Motion Machine anthology
LOST SIGNALS
(edited by Max Booth III and Lori Michelle) must be immediately forfeited for destruction.

Further review, use, disclosure, production, and
 
/
 
or distribution of this publication—particularly of the segment titled “*SOME
344
TH
343434
344
ING IN THE
44234
(CODE
 
:
234
)” by James Newman, which contains confidential information previously seized by the N.S.A.—is prohibited.

Non-compliance with this order will result in legal action by the federal government, with maximum penalties allowed by the law (up to and including treason, an offense punishable by death).

[CREDITS]

Max Booth III
(editor) is the editor-in-chief of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and the managing editor of
Dark Moon Digest.
He’s the author of several novels, including
How to Successfully Kidnap Strangers
and the forthcoming
No Sleep ’Til Dying.
A columnist for LitReactor, Slush Pile Heroes, and Gamut, Max resides in a small town outside San Antonio, TX. Follow him on Twitter @GiveMeYourTeeth.

Lori Michelle
(editor) is the CFO and layout specialist at Perpetual Motion Machine and the editor-in-chief at
Dark Moon Digest
. Lori is also the author of the novel,
Dual Harvest
, and has several stories appearing in anthologies such as the Bram Stoker
®
nominated
Qualia Nous
and
Slices of Flesh
. She spends her time working as a graphic artist for a trophy shop, teaching dance for a baton twirling group her daughter belongs to and telling her son to quit playing iPad. You can find Lori on Facebook.

Matthew Revert
(cover design) is the author of
Basal Ganglia
(Lazy Fascist Press),
How to Avoid Sex
(Copeland Valley
 
/
 
Dark Coast Press),
The Tumours Made Me Interesting
(LegumeMan Books) and
A Million Versions of Right
(LegumeMan Books). Revert has had work published in
Le Zaporogue, The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade, In Heaven Everything Is Fine
 
: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch, The New Flesh, The Bizarro Starter Kit (Purple)
and
Gone Lawn Journal
among others.

Luke Spooner
(interior illustrations) currently lives and works in the South of England. Having graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a first class degree he is now a full time illustrator working under two aliases
 
; ‘Carrion House’ for his darker work and ‘Hoodwink House’ for his work aimed at a younger audience. He believes that the job of putting someone else’s words into a visual form, to accompany and support their text, is a massive responsibility as well as being something he truly treasures.

Scott Nicolay
(introduction) writes Weird Fiction. One of this stories won an award. He also hosts the Weird Fiction podcast
The Outer Dark
.
The Outer Dark
won an award too. His second collection,
And at My Back I Always Hear
, will appear in 2017.

Matthew M. Bartlett
(“If He Summons His Herd” & “Where Night Covers”) is the author of
Gateways to Abomination
,
Anne Gare’s Rare Book and Ephemera Catalogue
,
Rangel
,
Creeping Waves
, and the illustrated chapbook
The Witch-Cult in Western Massachusetts
. His short stories have appeared in
Xnyobis #1
,
Resonator
 
: New Lovecraftian Tales From Beyond
,
Faed
, and
High Strange Horror
. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with his wife Katie and an unknown number of cats.

T.E. Grau
(“Transmission”) is an author of horror, crime, and dark fiction whose work has been featured in dozens of anthologies, magazines, literary journals, and audio platforms. His debut book of short stories,
The Nameless Dark
 
: A Collection
(Lethe Press) was nominated for a 2015 Shirley Jackson Award for Single-Author Collection, and ranked as the bestselling book published by Lethe Press in 2015. A novella,
They Don't Come Home Anymore
, will be published in late 2016 through This Is Horror. Grau lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, and is currently working on his second collection and his first novel.

Josh Malerman
(“The Givens Sensor Board”) is the author of
Bird Box
and the singer
 
/
 
songwriter for the band The High Strung.

Joseph Bouthiette Jr.
(“From
 
: Item L51610RDE, ‘The Dangsturm Interruption’”) is co-editor of Carrion Blue 555 and an avid board gamer. He put more work into this bio than he did his contribution to this anthology.

David James Keaton’s
(“Sharks With Thumbs”) fiction has appeared in over 50 publications. His first collection, 
FISH BITES COP
 
!
(Comet Press), was named the 2013 Short Story Collection of the Year by 
This Is Horror
. His second collection, 
Stealing Propeller Hats from the Dead 
(PMMP), received a Starred Review from 
Publishers Weekly
, who said, “Decay, both existential and physical, has never looked so good.” He lives in California.

Tony Burgess
(“Bad Lieutenant”) lives in Stayner, Ontario, with his wife Rachel and their two children. He is the author of The
Hellmouths of Bewdley, Pontypool Changes Everything, Caesarea
,
Fiction for Lovers
and
Idaho Winter
.
Pontypool
was made into a film by Bruce McDonald.

Michael Paul Gonzalez
(“How the Light Gets In”) is the author of the novels
Angel Falls
and
Miss Massacre’s Guide to Murder and Vengeance.
A member of the Horror Writers Association, his short stories have appeared in print and online, including
Gothic Fantasy
 
: Chilling Horror Stories, 18 Wheels of Horror, the Booked. Podcast Anthology
, HeavyMetal.com, and the
Appalachian Undead
anthology. He resides in Los Angeles, a place full of wonders and monsters far stranger than any that live in the imagination. You can visit him online at MichaelPaulGonzalez.com.

George Cotronis
(“Darkhorse Actual”) lives in the wilderness of Northern Sweden. His stories have appeared in 
XIII
, 
Years Best Hardcore Horror 
and forthcoming in
Futuristica Vol 2.

Betty Rocksteady
(“The Desert of Wounded Frequencies”) is an eclectic author and illustrator from Canada. Her early exposure to Stephen King,
The Weekly World News
, and EC horror comics shaped her into the woman she is today. With art and fiction, she explores personal fears and resonances. Her debut novella,
Arachnophile
, is part of Eraserhead Press’ 2015 New Bizarro Author Series. Her short fiction has been published by Halloween Forevermore, Grievous Angel, and Nothing’s Sacred. Learn more, and check out her macabre pen and ink art at www.bettyrocksteady.com. Keep in touch and keep up to date at www.facebook.com
 
/
 
bettyrocksteadyart.

Christopher Slatsky
(“Eternity Lie in its Radius”) is the author of 
Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales
. His stories have appeared in the
Lovecraft eZine
,
Innsmouth Magazine
, 
Dunhams Manor Press
, and others slated to appear in the
Year’s Best Weird Fiction v. 3
,
Strange Aeons
,
Nightscriptv. 2
, and elsewhere. He currently resides in the Los Angeles area.

Amanda Hard
(“Rosabelle, Believe”) is a former journalist and magazine editor currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at Murray State University. A 2015 finalist for Glimmer Train’s “New Writer Award,” her horror fiction has appeared in (or is forthcoming from)
Ruthless Peoples Magazine,
several flash fiction anthologies from the
Daily Nightmare
, two volumes of the
State of Horror
series from Charon Coin Press, and the anthology
Idolators of Cthulhu
from Alban Lake Press. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and lives in the cornfields of southern Indiana.