by J.R. Blackwell | Jun 15, 2006 | Story
Gabriella Hawk limped though the skywalks of The Hall. She could have slung her body into her metal skeleton to move quickly and easily, but Gabriella was determined to make use of her waking hours when she could. She wanted to make her body move under her own power. There was no use in being Awake if you couldn’t take advantage of the limitations of the body.
The metal walkways glowed with the soft green light of the thousands of tanks that hung suspended on giant hooks, linked to each other in marvelous chains. When Gabriella first started working in The Hall, she had been amazed at the silence with which the machines could move the great chains of people around in their glass cylinders. She could call any particular person to her, to inspect their pod personally for damage or computer errors. There were never any problems; the system had been automated perfectly for almost a hundred years.
There used to be thousands of Halls, but now, with everyone within the Halls, there were only eight. Eight halls for three billion sleeping people. Gabriella knew all the other caretakers by name. In the World, everyone knew her name, Gabriella the Martyr, giving up ten years of her life to watch over The World.
Inside their cylinders, everyone dreamed a communal dream of The World, where they lived in palaces, worked on art and literature and science, where they sculpted their own bodies and modeled their own sensations. Gabriella found herself trying to adjust her own body for its aches and pains, but the limitations of being Awake meant that her sensations were not under her control.
She noticed things, being Awake, like how dust settled in the metal edges of the walkway and how her hair looked much more fluid than in The World. She learned what bile was after eating some food that didn’t agree with her, and how boring regular bowel movements were. These little things make the experience seem surreal. Most things felt like they were the same, her fingertips still felt the same textures, and he feet were still shocked by cold floors and comforted by soft socks.
Gabriella called the cylinder of the young man to her station. Calling his cylinder was part of her daily ritual. She checked his diagnostics, and compared his time to hers. In her time, she had moved six months; in his it was five years. She watched a day tick by for him on his timer.
She could have called up a video image of what he was doing, but she didn’t have to look to know. He was with his wife and their child, a rare thing in The World, the fact that children were always planned made them more of a rarity, and the birth rate had plummeted.
Here, on the outside of The World, she did not have to watch him be happy with someone else. Gabriella folded her heart up and left The World to be Awake, cold, weak and losing years of life. To the people in The World, she was a saint, giving up years of her mental life to care for them. Their adoration afforded her a strange comfort. She did not need to touch his skin or smell his boy smell or sleep with her head on his chest. Saints do not need dreams. Saints were for sacrifice.
by Kathy Kachelries | Jun 14, 2006 | Story
“How much money are we talking?” Jake asked.
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
Jake couldn’t see the doctor’s face, but he’d developed a mental image of the man over the past few days and was certain that he had grey hair, a white jacket, a mustache, and an utterly blank expression. His voice carried as much energy as a hypoderm of sedative, and he made a shuffling sound when he walked.
“And what’s the interest rate?”
“Our reports say that your credit isn’t sufficient,” the doctor said.
“But I earn twice that every year!”
“As a graphic designer.”
Jake was silent.
“Your credit line is dependent on your projected income,” he continued. “Without your eyesight, you won’t be-”
“I’ll have my eyesight back, if I get these implants.”
“Unfortunately, that’s a technicality.”
Jake inhaled slowly, smelling the still air of of the room. He’d only been blind for nine days, but he already felt that his other senses had heightened. Beneath its antiseptic tartness the hospital concealed thousands of odors: chemical, human, and several that could have been either. Right then, the room smelled like body odor, bleach, and metal.
“There’s an alternative, though,” the doctor continued. “Are you familiar with bio-ads?”
Jake shook his head.
“Jenson Pharmaceuticals has been working on it for years, and they’re in the final stages of testing. The display would take up less than an eighth of your field of vision.”
“I don’t have a field of vision,” Jake said.
“You will. The display is embedded in a top-tier implant, which they pay for in full. All you’re responsible for is the aftercare.”
“They’ll just give me fifty thousand dollars worth of hardware?”
“In exchange for a captive audience.”
For the first time since the accident, Jake grinned. “And all I have to do is watch their ads?”
“That’s it,” said the doctor. “About forty years of them.”
by J. Loseth | Jun 13, 2006 | Story
“How’s it going, Cody? Got another level yet?” Miss Katrina knelt down next to Cody’s desk and peered over his shoulder at the game displayed on the screen. Cody looked up at her and grinned without pausing.
“I’m almost level 28!” he declared. “I finally got past that mountain with the pterodactyls and the squid.”
“Oh, yeah?” Miss Katrina made a note in her teacher’s book and smiled at Cody. “How’d you make it?”
“Turned out it was easy,” Cody admitted with a sheepish grin. “I just had to subtract to find their pattern integer, and then when I was jumping I put in the answers and timed it just right! I was adding before,” he admitted, “but I get it now.” He gave Miss Katrina a sunny smile and then glued his eyes back on the video game screen, where the digital Cody was asking NPCs for their opinions on the fall of Russian democracy so that he could properly advise his NPC feudal lord and thereby complete a quest.
“That’s good to hear! You’re going to be up to 30 in no time,” Miss Katrina praised Cody, making notations and circling his progress in red. Cody had come a long way, and when she punched up the game readout, it indicated his grades were up to high Bs and low As in areas where he’d only been scraping by before. It seemed he’d finally gotten the hang of the interface.
“You bet,” Cody agreed, his eyes now focused entirely on the screen as his lips moved, memorizing and synthesizing data.
“Good work,” Miss Katrina told her student, and moved on to the next. This was one Darrell Sumpter, whose experience point gain had been lagging lately, but Miss Katrina was sure that with the proper mentoring he’d be the same level as his peers in no time.
by B. York | Jun 12, 2006 | Story
Molly was just 14 but she’d already been the best in her class every year since she was allowed to grow and develop in the school system. It was no wonder that her hands shook today, staring at the vidscreen at school. “… I’m not the best? How could Hans best me!? I was well past his intellectual level last year!” Molly turned to her friends for comfort. There were so few of them left, and none of them had an answer for the suffering teen.
The girl shook her head and made fists. One of her friends spoke up, “Molly, it must have been a mistake,” Carol said, “You know how the school has been dealing with the loss of so many students. I mean, people are saying there’s a disease out there.”
Molly couldn’t stand to hear about her own failure excused as something as trivial as an administrative mistake. Many had gone missing, it was true, but Molly could only remember them as the ones who never lived up to her standards of intellect.
“You must be joking, Carol. They know exactly what’s going on but the Government won’t ban it! It’s Terracerin.” Clenching and unclenching her fists, the scorned girl turned back to her peers away from the vidscreen.
All of them seemed a bit uncomfortable with the topic. Even Carol the brave shuddered at the thought. “Molly, I hear Terracerin is all right. I wish I could take it but my parents won’t let me.”
“Good thing you didn’t!” Molly shouted at her friend, making them all back up a step. “You’d be just like that stupid Hans. He’s cheating! He’s taking the drug they give to stupid kids!”
Daelin spoke up, usually overly quiet she posed a question just to move the heat off her friend, “But… who’s the stupidest kid you know? I mean, none of them seem to be getting smarter and you’d think they would have taken it…” Trailing off, she awaited Molly’s wrath.
Molly posed the question to herself in a serious manner, “Stupidest? It used to be Cameron, then Theresa, then James but… all of them just disappeared. Hmm… I’d say the stupidest now would be Donovan.” Just then the bell rang, leaving Molly by herself as the girls scattered.
Walking the hallways of the school, Molly found it hard to grasp the idea of losing the year out to some joker taking Terracerin. She went to find Cameron’s locker. Amongst the halls of abandoned lockers she found his still there unopened and unclean. Flipping the latch up, she peeked inside while looking about for anyone watching. Her eyes lit up when she saw the plastic amber bottle on the top shelf that read “Terracerin”. Snatching it she mused to herself while she began to open. “Ha, barely any even taken. No wonder Cameron ran off. I’ll show them, I’ll show them all. Time to even the playing field, Hans.” With that, she looked down at the pill in her hand before popping the last one she’d ever take.
by Jared Axelrod | Jun 11, 2006 | Story
“I need to find a man.â€
Jahobie Muranme let out a huge, cracked-tooth grin at the dark fellow across the table from her. “There’s Long Trousers’ down the street. Betcha you could fin’ some hunk to brokeback with ‘fore the night is over.†Jahobie slung her right arm-the real one, without the blades-behind the back of her chair and clinked the ice in her glass suggestively. The dark man’s expression did not change.
“Very droll. That must be endlessly useful in your line of work. I am looking for this man.†The dark man slid a black sheet of plastic on the dirty table, and tapped it twice. A three-dimensional image of a man’s head hovered above the table. Jahobie took mental notes; defined brow, set jaw. Nose had been broken twice before.
“’E got a name?â€
The dark man tapped the plastic again and the head dissipated. He rolled the sheet up and pushed it across the table toward Jahobie. “As far as you’re concerned, no. He is #6.â€
“That make you #1?â€
“Not in the slightest. Bring this man to me, by whatever means necessary.â€
“Whateva’ means, eh? You care iffin he’s alive?â€
A bemused half-smile slunk out from behind the dark man’s blank expression. “Not particularly, no. He is not going to be very willing to come back with you, so I imagine lethal force will be necessary. Which is why we are giving you this, in the event of #6’s demise.†The dark man hefted a large steel cylinder on the table by the handle on it’s top. It gleamed in the dim light, out of place in a dingy bar like this.
“Whut’s that?â€
“Simple cryogenic canister, not much more than a can of liquid nitrogen, really. But it should suffice. Don’t bother bringing back the body; we only require the head.â€
“Just…the head.â€
“Yes. The body is meaningless.â€
“Whut’s in the head?â€
“You do not need to know.â€
Johobie crossed her arms, the steel blades on her left arm facing out. “Unless it’s something that’ll fall out, or he’ll remove ‘fore I get there, and then I get a bum kick for me troubles. No, sir, this ain’t amateur night. What’s in the head?â€
“Information. As long as you freeze the head within an hour of death, we will be able to extract enough of his mental state to graft it onto another living being. Obviously, something smaller and more docile. Current vote is a terrier, but I am of the opinion that a six-year-old girl might be more preferable. Terriers, after all, still have teeth.â€
“Yeah ’spose they do.†The clear joy the man’s face radiated when discussed the fate of this “#6†made Jahobie squirm. She had wanted the see some other expression on the man’s face sent they met, but now that she saw it… She was almost relieved to see the man regain his composure as he removed a black card and placed it on Jahobie’s side of the table.
“This card contains half of what we promised. Once we have #6, you shall receive another. I shall leave the canister with you.â€
Jahobie pocketed the card and the rolled-up holo-sheet. She was surprised that the dark man did not get up when she did. “Queer business you got going here, you don’t mind me saying.â€
“I am afraid I would have to care a great deal more in order to mind. Remember, it is not your head that we are paying you for.â€
