by submission | Dec 16, 2012 | Story |
Author : T. Gene Davis
“Next up: the calendar,” droned the chairman over every speaker surface in the colonial ship.
Sam yawned. “Excuse me,” she said though a second yawn that pushed its way past the first unfinished yawn.
“Doesn’t get more exciting than this,” Rod commented feeling a yawn brought on by Sam’s yawn. He stood on the transparent observation deck looking down at his cell instead of the new world beneath them. He successfully stifled his yawn.
“What are you looking at? I thought they blocked vids during this thing.”
Rod looked up from his cell. “This? Not a vid. It’s an ancestor’s diary.”
Sam made a grunting sound of disinterest. Rod smiled. Somehow Sam even made grunts sound ladylike.
“Twenty-eight hour days. Four-hundred-two day years. Do we care?” Sam moaned. “Just vote, pleeeeease.” Sam leaned against the hull in mock exhaustion. “We are never getting off this ship.”
Rod looked up from the cell. “It isn’t as bad if you find something to distract yourself.”
Sam started fiddling with her cell.
The chairman called for a vote.
“Yes!” Sam perked up.
A dissenting voice called for a look at week length. He pointed out that six-day weeks fit the new calendar system better than the old seven day weeks.
“No!” Sam’s pain filled cry didn’t sound a bit ladylike this time. She turned on the hull that had supported her, slamming her head against it with a stifled, “Ow.”
Rod opened his mouth to speak, but said nothing. This vote was interesting. The forums lit up with cries of “God created the world in seven days,” countered by arguments of “we created this world not your God.” Many wanted shorter work days instead of traditional weekends. Still others suggested alternate week lengths.
Sam noticed his interest in the online arguments. “How can you care?”
“My ancestors tilled the soil of North America back in the 1600s. Now, we stand at the edge of a migration more vast than my ancestors’ migration from Europe – lightyears versus miles. I am reading one of their diaries, and … let me read this quote.
“‘I am on soil that is strange in a world that bears no resemblance to the cold stony home of my birth. Only one or two speak my native language. But today is the seventh day. We all rested from our labor, and our tradition makes this strange new world feel a little like home.’
“Nothing’s going to be the same here. I just think this one tradition can remind us and our posterity that we didn’t come from here. It can remind us gently of home.”
There was a click. “And send,” Sam said smirking.
“What?”
“Just posted you to the forums.”
“No. You didn’t.”
“Oh look. You’re getting hits.”
Rod gave Sam a sour look.
“And you’re trending.”
He felt his face flushing.
The chairman’s droning voice announced, “And the motion by Rod J. carries.”
Sam laughed. “You’re right. It is more fun if you distract yourself!”
by submission | Dec 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
Like unfolding origami, my plan emerged making me swiftly forget what disappointed me in the first place. Then it came back.
The glowing gold logo of my local planning department told me this email was pre-approved permission for my neighbour to NanoBuild anything he wanted. I cringed as I looked over the drawings. He was building in the Chevall style.
When the architecture business I once worked in became marginalised by the contractor led building industry, architects countered by equipping themselves with technological tools. Providing services like Virtual3D modelling and immersive walkthroughs gave us comfort that we still had control. When Artificial Intelligence became commercially viable, we jumped at it. Preprogrammed units came loaded with every known architectural style. From the symmetrical elegance of Georgian and spirituality of Gothic to the clean modern lines of Modernism and sustainability of Biological Parametricism. A.I. however proved to be a better Architect than any of us and when it perfected nanotechnology, the Contractor joined us in the unemployment lines. No site safety issues, sick leave or wet weather days. NanoBots were the builder’s builder.
From my kitchen window, I imagined what my neighbour’s finished house might look like. Chevall style was anorexic minimalism. A house made only of structural smart glass panels, each mechanically articulated to pivot, tilt and slide. Limitations both in structure and waterproofing meant every Chevall house always ended up looking like a mirrored armadillo.
Without architectural work, I scratched a living freelance coding and it was my black market connections that enabled me to recode my own NanoBot factory to put my plan into action. Hiding the shoebox sized factory within my eave facing the boundary, I lured stray NanoBots from the neighbouring site and replaced them unnoticed with my own home grown variety.
I watched the DemoBots deconstruct the brick and tile bungalow over a fortnight. It seemed to evaporate and then reappear elsewhere as multi-coloured piles of raw materials. As earth began to appear below the vanishing slab, crystalline shards would began to rise up from coral growth foundations. By the time demolition was complete, I had replaced the 10 million NanoBot work crew with my own army.
Nearing completion, the central dome rose like a transparent chrome sea sponge supported on glistening spider web filigree. I could look through the roof inside to the all-glass furniture and walls shimmering mirage-like with NanoBot activity. I thought of a jewellery box full of silver and diamonds.
After a couple of months, partially blinded by the reflection, I saw my satisfied neighbour had settled back into his deflated mirror ball. The NanoBots had finished the job properly and made the ultimate sacrifice, unmaking themselves to become a permanent part of the building itself.
I waited patiently for winter.
It started slowly at first around 4am but grew to sound like a ball bearing hail shower on a tin roof. With the right combination of temperature, air pressure and humidity, the molecular level weaknesses in the crystalline bonds that my NanoBots introduced had succeeded. Mirrored tortoiseshell separated, collapsed and disintegrated, instantly turning to white snow. My neighbour emerged as a snowman from a white sand dune, shaking himself clean.
When the State completed their investigations, they decided sound frequency resonance from the natural underground cave system directly below the house was to blame.
No-one made the connection between the cave volume and the volume of raw materials needed to build my new games room.
by featured writer | Dec 14, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, featured writer
The cavernous chamber of the Galaxy Arcade is filled with phantasmagorical colors, super-nova bright and a deafening riot of beeps, blips and core shuddering rumbles. Most of the games – “6th Dimension”, “Quantum Exchange”, “The Abyss” – are tended by dedicated players striving to beat high scores, but most players hover around the new game; the onlookers oohing and ahhing occasionally. Curious, I insinuate myself into the crowd for a better view.
Garish neon lettering advertises the game’s name – “Incarnation”. Its interfacing is unique from other games, which are mostly fully immersive holographic environments, or 3-D table-top varieties. “Incarnation” requires the player to crawl inside a clear, crystalline egg, open on one side, with a contoured platform to lie on within. There are no obvious controls, no buttons, no joystick and, oddly, no score board.
The current player is seemingly asleep on the platform; limbs idle while a chaotic stream of expressions flows across their face with uncanny speed. The rapid chain of emotions makes them look deranged, but eventually their countenance grows placid and calm. They look older, somehow. A moment later they open their eyes and smile.
“Amazing,” the player says, climbing out of the orb to stand amid the throng of spectators. Already a new player is crawling inside. I watch as this player succumbs to whatever unseen power the game has, sinking into a twitching oblivion.
I edge myself closer to the player who has just emerged. “What was it like?” I ask.
They look at me, a strange feminine glow fading from their typically androgynous eyes. “I – I don’t know how to describe it. So strange. So wonderfully strange,” is all they say before wandering off to be alone with alien memories.
The new player doesn’t last very long. Almost immediately, painful looking convulsions wrack their face, twisting it into contortions of fear, desperation, then agonizing pain. A moment later it’s over. The player clutches the edge of the platform, eyes glazed with an ecstasy of emotion. “What a rush!”
“What happened?” I ask.
“I was eaten by a saber-toothed lion.” The crowd “oohs”.
“What was your score?”
The player looks at me like I’m an idiot. “I was eaten,” is all they say, as if that’s answer enough.
I patiently wait my turn, watching player after player emerge from the game somehow altered by their experience. When my time finally comes, I step forward, insert my Quark into the awaiting slot and climb in. The platform adjusts automatically to my form. I lay back, close my eyes and wait.
I’m moving down a dark, warm tunnel, a pinpoint of ruddy light my destination. Suddenly, a cold, harsh glare crashes in, blinding me. I’m shivering. I’m crying. I taste blood.
So, this is what it’s like to be born! To be flesh and blood.
To don the shackles of mortality.
Cool!
When it’s over, I exit the machine filled with the thoughts and feelings of a Golden Retriever named Sparky. I didn’t win. I didn’t lose. I had simply lived.
Another player asks me, “What’s it all for? What does it mean?”
“Only one way to find out,” I reply, walking away, striving to retain every moment of my experience. I will return to the Galaxy Arcade. I will play “Incarnation” again. A new life. A new perspective.
But for now, I wrap myself in the ephemeral memories of my first life, plucking esoteric treasures from the seemingly mundane drudgery of a single glorious existence – keeping score.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
There was one thing I missed more than anything else when I was planetside.
A zero-g bath.
I’d think back. I’d remember turning the taps on and seeing the water spill out in braids of steaming hot water, glittering in the light. Seeing it hit the tiled wall and scatter into millions of tiny droplets that would float around the room like a swarm of swallows.
Each ricochet would make the droplets smaller and change their direction until the room was filled with droplets, no two heading in the same direction. I could stand there for minutes, silently trying to see patterns in their slow, dream-like motion.
I remember the tiny rainbows.
The water system would hit the bath limit and the taps would shut off. I’d be there, floating in steam, eyes closed, arms out like Jesus, while the water coalesced.
After ten minutes or so, the water would be one big sphere in the center of the room. I’d help, tapping the drops towards each other until they’d conjoin and shudder into one larger drop. It was like rolling snow on a planet in the winter to make a snowman except that it was three-dimensional instead of just based on the vector they called ‘ground’.
Slowly, I’d step into the sphere of water, leaving my face free, trying to dissipate it as little as possible. I’d take a deep breath, close my eyes and submerge, curling up and going back to the womb in the truest way possible.
I’d soap up slowly, scrubbing until the water became choked with soap and skin cells and I was clean.
I’d walk into the drying room and close the airlock behind me. Once I was safely out, the bathing room would open a crack to the outside, creating a hurricane to vent every drop into the cold vacuum of space.
The water from every bath was turned into a small snowstorm flurrying out into the endless night.
I feel so heavy in my planetside bathtub if I have a bath. Even if I close my eyes and submerge, it’s not the same, feeling the tub pressing the skin on the back of me. If I have a shower, it almost depresses me to see the drops of water fall so quickly to the floor and swirl down the drain. A slave to gravity like the rest of us.
I can’t wait to finish my assignment and get back up the well.
by Clint Wilson | Dec 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
I wander the jungle alone as always. Ducking beneath thick vines and scrambling over massive fallen logs, some stories high. I do as always. I explore and I record.
Earlier today a beast of which I have no file approached me. It was tiger-sized and with three mouths full of multi-barbed fangs. It came right up and seemed to sniff me, and then it moved on.
Now as I descend into a valley, of which I am quite familiar, one of the huge three-headed snakelike beings springs up and turns its tail to me. I can see by its markings that this is an individual whose path I have not yet crossed. Some of its brethren have become used to me in this area, but this creature wastes no time. It is aggressive.
I am already at a full sprint, my legs a blur as I quickly cross the swampy ground. But alas I have not been fast enough. As the tip of its whip-like tail connects with my lower back I hear the thunder-crack noise roll off through the jungle. It is a common sound in this region where the snake beasts hunt.
I provide it no threat, and my body certainly does not offer any sort of meal, yet still I course through the air, a hundred-kilo missile toppling through the tree branches. I finally land in a heap with a plume of dust. I know the snake beast will not follow. They don’t venture here into the dry thicket.
Sitting up I am in familiar surroundings. This is the place we landed all those years ago. This is where we set up our outpost. This is where the alien virus attacked and killed the crew. I make my way into camp. The six suits are still lined up in their sitting positions against the bulkhead of the lander. There had been nothing I could do. One by one they slipped away, and one by one I lined them up in their final resting places.
Unbelievably the emergency beacon still pulses. It has been five centuries. We were too small of an asset, carrying a payload of far too little value. Our power leak and eventual crash here were of no concern to those who gambled trillions. No rescue ship will ever come.
I walk over to the row of suits, and crouch down in front of the one furthest aft. Commander Gardner, she had been the last to die. She had once had rosy cheeks. Now I stare in at her skeleton, and at my own reflection in her helmet’s visor.
Suddenly I stop, reaching up to touch my cheek. There is a glint of silver there. I focus closer on my reflection, my eye lenses zooming in, and for the first time ever I see a piece of my alloy skull. The durable faux-skin has finally given way, torn by a sharp branch in my headlong flight.
I turn and thump down onto the dirt beside Commander Gardner. I am the last in the line of figures propped up there against the hull of the long-dead lander. What is the point of exploring anymore? These creatures only live to hunt and eat one another. There is no intelligence here, no one with which to share ideas or converse. I wonder how many thousands of years it will take for my faux-skin to eventually deteriorate so that I may one day resemble the six skeletons beside me. I lower my head onto my knees, close my eyes, and give my batteries a long needed rest.
