by submission | Feb 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : James McGrath
I began by stealing money.
Hacking mindchips isn’t new; thousands across the planets survive by stealing bank details, logins, passwords, and rerouting what they find. Making it disappear, to pop-up elsewhere without the slightest of trails.
It was challenging at first, but I grew tired of repetition; of safety. I took to the streets, found the wealthy and vulnerable at ATMs and planted ideas. I’d hack them not to take information, but to implant it: the idea of a random act of kindness. Occasionally it’d work and they’d drop hard cash in my hands, but usually they’d dismiss it as mad ponderings of their subconscious. You can only transfer information, what people do with it is their choice.
I was no longer looking through data-logs in a chip; I was using the chip to hack minds. They’d brought back the injection for this very crime.
One night, as I walked to my apartment, I passed a woman in the hallway whose fragile smile moved me. I hacked her right there: Julia Harvey, JH22450802-GB; her name and ID number – the means to hack her remotely. I took nothing more.
Hours later I travelled her head: traversing feelings and exploring memories. To think she was unaware of my presence as I became the person who knew her most intimately of all.
She worked in retail which she hated and lived alone, as men came and went but never stayed long. She kept terriers, Bobby and Dylan, who she’d trained to yap when she played the guitar. She was wonderful and the more I learnt the more her tragic perfection captured me.
Julia was lonely, perhaps as lonely as I.
Her sadness infected me. She was lovely, why should she cry so much? Why should someone so beautiful, kind and funny, be so unlucky with people? Everyone should care about her. Everyone should want her to be happy.
She contemplated suicide, once even arranging a row of pills by a bottle of water. She thought of how her last feeling was that of sadness and how she longed to die happy. Then she cleared the table. Besides, she joked with herself, who would feed the dogs?
*
I want to talk to Julia. I want that more than anything in the world, but she doesn’t know me. She prizes hard work and determination. She picks tall, good-looking boyfriends. She loathes criminals. Nothing I could put in her head could possibly make her feel for me. I wouldn’t want it to. I’d want it to be real.
But I know how to make her happy.
You know when you go see a movie or an advert plays? How it connects to your mindchip and makes your brain release the slush that heightens your feelings?
I’m going to make it gush. It’ll flood her with bliss, smother her in euphoria. The shock of it will kill her but she’ll only feel elation. Her last thought will be the ecstasy of that moment.
When you manipulate someone’s brain it logs it. When I suggested to those people to give me money, they had no idea a crime had been committed and that’s why I’m alive today. When I give Julia her desire, when the building fills with her screams of pleasure, they’ll find it was me.
I’m going with her.
I’m going to activate it simultaneously so that as it hits her, it hits me too. As she feels the greatest feeling of her life, I share in it. In mere seconds, we’re going to both get what we deserve in a wave of rapture.
by submission | Feb 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Jaime Astorga
John_357897453 woke up, looked at the timer which sat next to his bed, and realized that he only had five minutes to live.
Five sidereal minutes, anyway. For him, it would feel more like several hours, not that was an excuse to waste any more time. With a stretch, he got up from the bed and sat at his desk, where he reviewed the assignment he would work on until the end of his life. A few subjective minutes later, he was smiling. The assignment was an interdisciplinary thesis, one which would require research on Latin American cultures and technological advancement during the 20th century, analysed using an innovative historical model which had recently gained mainstream attention. He knew that most of his instances spent their lives working on boring undergraduate papers, and was thankful to have the chance to work on such an interesting assignment. He quickly poured himself a cup of coffee (a habit he retained from his office days in a previous life) and immediately set to work.
John_357897453 was an upload. Like thousands of others, the original John had jumped at the chance to become one of the first virtual beings. Unlike thousands of others, John’s copies had not given in to existential despair and depression once they had woken up and been confronted with the reality that, exactly like they had been told, each of them would only experience a couple of months of training in academic research and paper writing, followed by a few hours of preparing some wealthy university student’s assignment, followed by the cessation of experience and death. John was a true half-glass-full kind of guy, and his instances always appreciated everything good in their lives; even working on an above-average paper in a comfortable environment during their last few hours on Earth.
Eventually, John_357897453 finished the paper, took a moment to admire his work, and then hit the submit key. An instant later, he stopped experiencing anything. The server time which was required to run the uploads was very expensive, and it would not do to waste any of it unnecessarily. A static copy of John_357897453 as he existed at the moment of shutdown would be kept for a few weeks, in case his customer had any complains which would require restarting him to address, but this was unlikely. John was very good at customer satisfaction.
Over in the physical world, an attendant stuffed the printed thesis into a manila envelope and handed it to the young man in a business suit in front of her. “Your paper is ready,” she said with a smile, “thank you for choosing Papers-2-Go and have a nice day.”
“No, thank you miss, you’re a life-saver!” the man replied, before turning on his heel and running to his professor’s office. If he hurried up, he could still make the extended deadline.
by Clint Wilson | Feb 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“But it’s been almost two hundred years sir! How could this be?”
“I don’t know. No one on board can explain it, but there are definitely at least a dozen human lifeforms showing on scanners down there.”
The ancient story of the plankton combine, Goler II was well known. During a routine harvesting dive an unexpected freak wave had reared up and blindsided her, disorienting stabilizers, frying computers, and eventually plunging the vessel down to the distant depths of Epsilon IV’s planetary ocean floor, taking all six of her crew with her. This had been nearly two centuries ago. Until now there had never been a viable reason to attempt any sort of salvage recovery of the big ship from such a hostile environment. But Novascomium, once the primary element used in the warp drive capacitors of many antique industrial workhorses such as Goler II, had recently become extremely rare and valuable.
“Abandon salvage mission, execute rescue and recovery protocol.”
“But sir, there must be some mistake. There’s nobody down there!”
“Ensign, did I stutter? Did I not make myself clear?”
The underling quickly did away with his visions of potential salvage percentages and snapped to attention. “Of course not sir. I will assemble a rescue party at once.”
An hour and a half later the thirteen extracted souls ranging in age from early teens to seemingly quite elderly all huddled together wide eyed and frightened in their strange filthy woven robes. Captain Walters entered the infirmary. A nurse motioned toward one of the strangers, a grey bearded man at least in his seventies. “We think he’s their leader. He seems to speak for them.”
The captain stepped forward. “Greetings friend. Please tell me, where do you hail from?”
The old man shuffled in his rags looking nervously back and forth, wringing his hands in worry. Finally he replied, “My fadder was Gauge Goler. My mudder was Console Goler.” He motioned toward the old woman at his side. “This here’s ma sister Nav. And the rest there’n, some’s my brudder’s kids, some’s ours. Over dare’s my cousin Bulkhead. His fadder was Stevens Goler da second, great great grandson to Cappy and Firmet Stevens, da founders of our beloved home.”
Stevens… Walters remembered the history of Goler II and her captain Devon Stevens. A cold dark dawning started to creep up his spine. “Tell me friend, how do you live? What is it you do to survive down there in your beloved home?”
The old man shifted from foot to foot, eyes darting back and forth. “Why, not much. Jist da normal tings. Ya know, we use da intakes to make oxgin. And we capture da plankt’n and sea’s weed for’n our grub ya know.”
Suddenly an aid entered the infirmary. “Captain I have that report you wanted.”
“I’ll be right with you.” Walters smiled at the old man. “Please excuse me sir, I shall return momentarily.”
His subordinate led him out into the hallway and handed him the soft screen. Walters scanned the document, his eyes growing wider as he read.
Goler II: Interstellar plankton combine farmer. Main design, protein extractor/freighter. Crew: Six individuals. Four android labourers and two human astronauts, Captain Devon Stevens and First Mate, Lieutenant Dawn Stevens, his twin sister.
by submission | Feb 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“May 18th is totally unacceptable!” says the Thrike admiral. “That date falls in the middle of the Feast of the Blessed Serrod, the Great and Enlightened. But on June 4th, then…THEN,” he raises his neck frill for emphasis,”you should beseech the Mother of All Creation to have mercy on your souls, for we assuredly will not!”
I take a sip of water and wait for the response from the Veydrel fleet commander.
“The Thrike representative is fully aware that our hatchlings will be returning to their learning cycle on June the 4th and that our people will be too busy attending to their young to engage in battle. Now, the 3rd of July, that will be the day history will record as the beginning of the end of the Thrike menace!”
It’ll go on like this for a while, I think. My mind wanders back to when we made first contact with the aliens. The Veydrel and Thrike fleets entered the solar system almost simultaneously from opposite directions. They each warned humanity about the alleged threat the other represented and asked to use Earth as a base of operations during the upcoming battle. The leaders of the world refused to take sides and offered to try to broker peace.
“August 12th!” yells the Veydrel. My mind snaps back to the present. “That day,” the alien continues, raising a twelve-fingered hand in the air for emphasis, “the sky will burn with the fires from ten thousand Thrike ships!”
The Thrike leader looks at a computer screen and sighs, one of several humanisms he’s acquired. “I have to get my fangs sharpened August 12th. Give thanks to your gods that this dental appointment that I have already rescheduled twice has saved you from eternal damnation in the afterlife!”
I recall as a teenager being fascinated by the psychology and customs of the Thrike and the Veydrel concerning war. Neither species could comprehend concepts such as the first strike or the sneak attack. When American diplomats related the historical accounts of Pearl Harbor and 9/11, both groups of aliens had trouble recognizing either one as acts of war. “But they weren’t scheduled by mutual agreement of the combatants,” said one of the dumbfounded extraterrestrials.
“On September 28th,” says the Thrike, “the streets will run blue with the blood of– Wait. Our Festival of Merrymaking and your vacation both start that day. Nevermind.”
Something else we learned was that both civilizations were about ten thousand years older than recorded human history which meant they’d been around long enough for their calendars to fill up almost entirely with holidays and remembrance days and festivals and religious observances. So delegates like myself have been attending meetings like this for the last 40 years as both sides try to find a date without scheduling conflicts when they can go to war.
“Perhaps a skirmish could be undertaken late on October 21st,” suggests the Veydrel, “as your Imperial Foundation Day comes to a close and just before our Labor Drone Appreciation Day begins? No. No, the time would be insufficient.”
I sit here bored to tears like the other human delegates. At least the Thrike and Veydrel presence has allowed humanity to leapfrog a few centuries ahead technologically. I suppose decades of bureaucratic tedium is a small price to pay.
“Have a care, Veydrel!” admonishes the Thrike admiral. “Next year is a leap year on the human calendar! An extra day! Even now our calendrical tacticians are scouring the days and weeks to schedule your date with annihilation!”
by Julian Miles | Feb 24, 2015 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It emerges from whatever variety of nowhere that allowed it to traverse the vast distances between the worlds of the Beacon, and I know that it’s a Stranger. I’m about to slap the alarm pad when the nine-hundred meter form dips its prow and opens vast wings of multicoloured force, like some wanderer over the seas spreading it’s wings after a dive. Rainbow lightning dances down its length as supposedly discrete realities claw at each other. The sheer spectacle paralyses me.
Sure enough, after the unfurling comes the first flap. At its peak, the wingtips touch and clashing energy fields flash ball lightning and flux portals. With a great downstroke, the machine fully exits the nowhere it’s crossed and rises above our plane of observation. The great pinions spread again and it hangs there; an albatross of the gods.
“Tychnar Beacon Twelve to intergalactic vessel just emerged in our quadrant, render your identifiers.”
This is the moment I dread: when a Stranger can become an Intruder and our survival hinges on the alien devices that are inset around this planetoid.
“Kreeloo kreeloo day, narien laday sho tok nu madest.”
I sit up as alarms howl and Fresnor, my second, wakes so violently he falls from his hammock. Looking down at the master console, I see lights racing in patterns as the language CPU gives itself primary status and brings n=E2 processing power to bear.
Applying the equivalent of double Earth’s entire computing ability in 2217 allows the language system to produce and answer in ninety seconds, which indicates this Stranger is an incomprehensible distance from home.
The translation comes out in a pleasant baritone: “Formal greeting under auspices of unknown deity, this is Laday of Narien seeking the insightful far-travelling one.”
Fresnor is preparing navigation co-ordinates, collating three-hundred ways of saying ‘your destination will be at this point at this time’, in the hope Laday can understand.
Fresnor nods and I lean down to the receiver: “Fair journeying to you, Laday of Narien. We are transmitting a navpulse now. If you cannot derive direction from the primary sets contained, we have a secondary set.”
There is a pause, then the glorious starbird folds its wings and dives into a hole in reality that appears before it. Within a minute, we are alone in the vastness of space once again.
“That was pretty.”
I look at Fresnor: “It was. Here’s hoping it carries hope for the Worldwalker’s quest.”
Fresnor sighs: “Only in that it’s another race joining us in preparing to fight the Cornered Circle.”
Nodding, I ask: “I have always wondered: are they attacking us or fleeing what follows them?”
Fresnor tosses me a mealpack: “It makes no difference. They will come for Tychnar. Everything that crosses relies on the Anchor signal for multiversal navigation. The strategic necessity is that Tychnar must fall.”
I grimace: “So we’re doomed?”
Fresnor laughs: “No, we just need some unusually good luck.”
