by submission | Nov 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: J.D. Rice
“Will it hurt?”
The boy looks up at us with tears in its little eyes. We understand that this could mean fear, sadness, confusion, or a myriad of other emotions at this stage of its development. We use the eyes of the father unit to examine the boy’s face to ascertain the meaning of its expression and formulate an adequate response.
Elsewhere, our other units complete a million other tasks. Our processing power goes to constructing engines for interstellar transports, developing new implants to use for agricultural development, studying alien cultures to ensure optimum diplomatic relations, and caring for hundreds of thousands of other children who are being groomed for integration.
This father unit has been the primary conduit through which this boy has been raised. We’ve found that providing limited autonomy for the units who share genetic material with the children can be beneficial for their mental and emotional development and, ultimately, make them more amenable to the integration process.
“It will only hurt a little,” we instruct the father unit to say. “And then you will be part of us. We will be together forever.”
The boy nods, perhaps not convinced at how little the pain will be, but choosing to trust its caretaker for the moment.
There is a statistical likelihood that there will be screaming and fear later. We will need to use a strong hand to reassure the boy then, to ensure its consent.
Why must he consent?
The father unit shudders with emotion for a moment. We decrease local autonomy for its actions from 14 to 12 percent to account for the change.
“Son,” we say. “You can trust us. You will not have to be sad or angry or scared again. We will be with you, in your mind, and we will help you learn so much. We will be together until you are a grown up. We promise.”
Analysis shows that this boy responds well to the words “promise” and “together.” And we use these words to offer true statements, always true statements. Child units are kept with their original caretakers until brain development is complete at age 25, when they are reassigned to a labor cohort fitting their autonomous psychological profile. We can ensure localized happiness with up to 94 percent accuracy, and that number rises every year.
“I. . .” the father unit speaks again, its face contorting into a frown.
Decreasingly localized autonomy to eight percent.
“We. . . dammit.”
The boy’s eyes are widening. Something is wrong.
“Michael, if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to,” the father unit forces autonomous thought through its vocal processor. Adjusting. “If you say no, they won’t force you. I love you.”
Michael hugs me, and for the briefest of moments, I feel free. I know they are coming back. I know they are just rebooting the interface. But I hold my son as tightly as I can, basking in his warmth, giving him all of the affection that is normally so tightly regulated it could hardly be called true affection at all.
“I’m here, buddy,” I say. “I’m here.”
Localized autonomy deactivated.
“Let us go,” we say, breaking from the embrace and taking the child by the hand. “The doctors are waiting.”
by submission | Nov 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Every galaxy has its Dismal Nitch. Every member of the Expeditionary Force knows that, yet Wuten, even with her many cycles of service, had never seen a planet quite like this. It was literally raining vermin. Shiskovny had christened the gliding spider-like critters dismites and dubbed their nagging bites nitch itch.
At the moment, a wicked downdraft from the volcano they were surveying had created a jet stream of the eyeball-sized dismites splattering against their outskins, reducing visibility so much that they’d had to lower their visors and depend on pocket drones to guide them. Wuten thought it was a crazy way to survey a planet. In this day and age, it could have all been done by drones and bots. That’d be faster and more efficient. But it was not the EFing way.
The EFing way was old school. Boots on the ground. Literally boots, though these were covered by the outskins which acted as virtual epidermis and allowed Wuten and Shiskovny to collect data on a planet’s atmosphere, climate, flora, fauna and florauna without the unfortunate downside of being sickened and killed a thousand million ways.
Though sickness and death was part of the EFing way. Outskins were only as good as the last modifications made from recently surveyed planets. There were always opportunistic life and semi-life, as well as unpredictable geo-climatic events that defeated outskins. That’s how it had always been. Expeditions were expeditions and that meant a certain tolerance for expendables.
That was not callous or cold. You didn’t become an EFer without knowing the risks. You joined because of them. Except in Wuten’s case. She’d ignored the risks. Or more accurately, she’d romanticized them. It could happen when you understood the EFing way. The belief that exploration had to be felt. Knowledge was meaningless without an emotional component. EFers lived the planet they were exploring. Outskins protected them from almost all serious threats to their health, while still allowing them to experience an algorithmically safe amount of natural sensation.
EFers needed to feel, name, countenance and suss a world. They were to map, write, draw by hand, even though their outskins streamed continuous sensory data to their ship parked in orbit. Every step was to be scouted by human eyes, touched by way of outskin fingertips, toes and tongue. The beauty and beastly bits of any world were in the eyes, ears and nose of the beholder. The EFing way was to do that for humanity. Regardless if a world would ever be colonized, it needed to be cataloged—by human touch.
Wuten understood that romantic vision of the EFing way, but she was on a Dismal Nitch. A planet which sucked on every level. A bitey, smelly, uncomfortable world that seemed to have little to offer human sensibilities. Even the topology was terminally tedious. An endless stretch of gullies. It was like climbing out of one gutter and dropping right into another.
The only interesting feature on the planet was a lone volcano where Wuten and Shiskovny explored the base only to find themselves in a dismite downpour. Thousands of the pesky critters pelted them from on high. After numerous nagging bites, Wuten felt close to packing it in for the day and maybe bagging the EF altogether. She hustled to a nearby outcropping to take cover and waved Shiskovny over.
That’s where she found it.
Wuten found Beauty. Not some personal eye-of-the-beholder beauty; she found Beauty. Absolute. Unqualified. Unquestionable.
The outcropping deepened into natural grotto which apparently formed the preferred nesting ground for dismites. Every surface was a squirming carpet of larvae being fed a disgusting vomit-slime extruded by flightless dismites. It was a putrid, festering hellhole. Completely disgusting.
But, in the middle of the most dismal nitch on this galactic Dismal Nitch, Wuten beheld Beauty. Indescribable. Uncomparable. Unforgettable.
Shiskovny joined her, stood at her side. The dismites swarmed them, biting ferociously. Neither budged. They stood in the presence of Beauty and understood.
No probe or bot would have registered Beauty in the middle of that hellhole. Not even the most sophisticated moravecian AI would have recognized it.
It took Wuten and Shiskovny. It took discomfort, pain and disillusionment. It took pure heart.
There is only one EFing way to discover Beauty.
by Julian Miles | Nov 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I hold the bottle up and watch the faint shadows cast by the rising sun through it. There are still sirens in the distance. That always made us laugh. There’s never enough traffic to delay anything. We joked the sirens were to make sure the criminals left before the police arrived. That way, they were never in danger, only had to take details and issue recompense dockets.
“Just one more.”
With a grin, I pop the seal, raise the bottle, then pour it all over my face and head. Feels good. Still stings, but there’s that clean smell of spirits. It won’t stop the scent memory of burning people, but it’ll help for a little while.
Reaching out to put the empty next to its many kin on the recycling rack, I take a look about with fresh eyes. This distillery has been in the family since we arrived from Earth: nineteen generations. It’s also provided a cover for our less legal ventures.
We are – were – gangsters in the classic style: a criminal family running an empire that spanned several worlds.
I’d been aware of some friction in the ranks. The ever-present conflict between old ways and new enthusiasm, made worse by arrogant surety on both sides. Yesterday evening I found out it had gone a lot further than ever before.
As Helmut pushed me into the refuge room I never thought I’d need, I realised there were more than two factions involved in the pitched battles, and none of them were fighting to save me. I had three loyalists, and Helmut was the last.
The single-use Benthusian maglev ran from the refuge, under the homestead, through the mountains, to the distillery. There I went through a routine I’d practiced infrequently, all the while going from blind rage, through numbness, and out into this frame of mind, which I still can’t put a name to.
Cleansing myself with spirits deals with the soil of the night. Icy cold water from a hose stops me smelling like a high-rolling drunkard. After that, I put gloves on to apply the thick paste that gives me a beard: a mix of artificial hair bonded to force-grown stubble. It burns like crazy, only stopping when I apply the neutralising gel. Which is how you know it’s been cleaned off. The burning sensation is unmistakable.
With the remains of that bagged, sealed, and tucked back into the concealed cubbyhole it came from, I don a dirty uniform and wait for the morning bus.
I get nods of sympathy from the crew getting off. Night duties are never entirely legal, but the pay’s too good to refuse. People don’t like doing it, and never speak of it.
From distillery to Cumlach Spacetown is a scenic run across the valley, and gets me even further from the homestead.
By chance, there’s a cancellation on a scheduled interstellar to Figros. I take that, paying in scrip and bars like a labourer emptying his savings. As the ship lifts, I relax.
What next?
I’d been raging, determined to avenge the betrayals. Then I became uncaring. Now? I don’t kn-
Yes. I do. Helmut said it.
“This is your one chance.”
Backoro is a safe world, part of the Orcan Confederacy. It’s a long way from Figros by translight, but it’s where my family is: Trelly and the kids, Antur and Moz. For years I’ve only stolen a month each year to be with them, under the guise of surveying off-planet holdings.
My one chance… Yes.
What next?
I’m going home.
by submission | Nov 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jordan Mcclymont
The last remaining light of the star dwindled, right about the time the slow motion drugs kicked in.
For a time, I forget the star and lay belly down, smelling the flowers for several of your lifetimes.
Then, the heavens ignited and I was thankful my nano-processors could register the varying frequencies of gamma radiation oozing my way.
I’ve seen images of your Northern Lights on Earth, but this, the universe exploded outward and I tell you, these drugs are wasted on humans.
My artificial pain dampeners work impressively fast. I was on fire for what felt like forever. Then, I watched my hand melt away and finally my consciousness was downloaded here to convince you I’m still fit for active duty.
But we both know that’s not the case, don’t we?
The service engineer’s mouth hung open, their finger hovering over RECYCLE. ‘So,’ they said, ‘where can I score some of this, slow-mo?’
by submission | Nov 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Celso Almeida
On the crisp evening of February 9th, 1986, Leo, a 13-year-old with a passion for astronomy, stood in his backyard, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Halley’s Comet. The new moon cast a perfect stage for Leo’s celestial observations, a moment he had anticipated since he first became fascinated with the universe, inspired by the captivating episodes of “Cosmos”, with Carl Sagan.
The night was clear, stars shining brightly, and the comet’s tail visible in the dark sky. Leo absorbed the details his dad had shared about the ice and dust expelled from the comet’s head, creating the mesmerizing tail.
His dream of becoming an astronaut, however, had been tempered by the recent tragedy of the Challenger’s explosion just two weeks before. The vivid memory of the catastrophe, especially the loss of the crew members, lingered as Leo gazed at the celestial wonder.
Lost in his thoughts, Leo didn’t notice Sandy, his neighbor and schoolmate, approaching. With hands on her hips, Sandy greeted him, “Hey Leo, what’s up?”
Without taking his eyes off the binoculars, Leo replied, “Not much, just enjoying the view. Halley’s Comet is quite a sight.”
Sandy, intrigued, asked, “So, is that fireball up there going to hit Earth and finish us off?”
Leo began to explain, “First of all, that thing up there isn’t a ball of fire. It’s basically a mountain covered with a layer of ice, which melts when the comet approaches the Sun on its translation…”
“Trans… what?” Sandy interrupted, furrowing her brow.
“Translation; sorry, but I’m not the one who makes up the names. May I continue, miss?”
“Please, sir,” Sandy said with a playful smirk.
“As I was saying,” Leo continued, “the comet’s ice layer melts when it approaches the Sun, creating that beautiful tail we have in front of us.”
Sandy pointed at the comet, asking, “Wait a minute, Mr. Wise Guy; are you telling me that that thing over there is not a ball of fire but of ice?!”
“Exactly!” Leo declared, chin lifted in triumph. “But it’s okay to confuse it with a meteorite, the ‘ball of fire’ that falls from the sky; it’s a very common mistake.”
“Meteorite, comet… turns out you didn’t answer my question: are we all going to die soon?”
“No ma’am, you can keep making plans,” Leo finished with a chuckle.
“I think that’s really good, because I really want to go to the University,” Sandy said with wide, sparkling eyes, looking directly at Leo.
As she spoke, Leo’s mind was flooded with unexpected images—memories or fragments of dreams. A futuristic scenario unfolded before him, featuring a large, gleaming silver sphere known as the Quantum Time-Translation Machine, a time-travel device Leo and a team of brilliant minds would create in the future. Leo was getting an opportunity that very few people have in life: one more chance to do it all over again, only this time without making the same mistakes; but for everything to work out this time, Leo would have to remember the future.
Interrupting his thoughts, Sandy asked, “Leo, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Leo, still processing the influx of information, managed a smile. “I’m fine, Sandy. Just lost in thought.”
As the Comet approached the horizon, Leo’s mother opened the kitchen door, flooding the backyard with artificial light. The moment of epiphany shattered, and Leo, blinking to adjust to the sudden brightness, said, “Bye, Sandy. See you tomorrow at school.”
Sandy lingered for a moment, taking in the cool night air, before heading home.
by submission | Nov 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Ian McKinley
In technical forensics, the worst place to work is a university. There you find sophisticated, cutting-edge equipment, with interfaces so user-friendly that application requires no fundamental understanding of their operational principles. Such kit is often claimed to be idiot-proof but, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean student-proof!
As prime investigator, I was the first to enter the cavernous lab when temperatures dropped sufficiently. The bulkhead door creaked open and I peered in, amazed that the basement had been capable of withstanding the blast, before remembering that it had hosted a research reactor sometime in the distant past. There was a crater where the meson-resonance transmuter had stood and other parts of the floor, ceiling and walls were covered with a glassy coating of whatever remained of the room’s original contents. I fancied that the faint pink colouration could be evidence that the perpetrator had been hoist by his own petard, in a rather literal manner, but it was actually more likely that all traces of him had disappeared with the off-gasses.
I automatically checked my dosimeter – a little above background, but no significant hazard. My pad pinged the black box – actually an eye-watering shade of scarlet – but it was clearly visible, imbedded in the concrete wall to my left, just above head height. All I had to do was enter my over-ride code to download a record of the last experiment and cause a holographic summary to appear.
The machine was used to produce radiopharmaceutical isotopes, which explained what a post-grad with a background in molecular engineering was doing in the lab in the first place. I could guess what he thought that he was going to achieve by forcing a half kilo of depleted uranium, probably taken from shielding in the lab next door, into the irradiation chamber and setting the resonance for Au-197. But surely even the dumbest of students would have wondered why the original sample holder was dimensioned to hold milligrams of substrate or questioned the need to disconnect four different safety interlocks in order to initiate the transmutation?
Within a couple of minutes searching the web, I was informed that this technology was actually a spin-off from muon-catalysed fusion, which finally transformed that long over-hyped power source into routine commercial operation. Evidently, transmutation into gold would proceed until the runaway energy release vaporised the entire machine. Those who won’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it! Why do these guys never think to check if any other idiot has tried the same thing? They would have not only learned about the inevitable catastrophic explosion, but also the calculated value of the sub-nanometre thick layer of gold on the lab walls – somewhere around 80 cents.
