by submission | Apr 10, 2009 | Story
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Agnes glanced up at the tiny yellow dot that hardly pierced the vacuum of black sky. She crouched over in her threadbare spacesuit touching Carl as their gloved hands picked through the rubbish pile. Her stomach fed upon itself, while her eyes searched for bits of discarded food.
“The supply ships will be here soon.” Carl tried to straighten up, failed, and collapsed on the ground.
“You’ve been saying that for years, you old bear.” She sat down beside Carl, enveloping his gloved hand in hers.
“They promised,” he whispered before his heart pumped one last time.
Startled, Agnes realized his passing. She carefully removed his helmet and touched Carl’s cheek.
She thought back to their joyful arrival buoyed with youthful hope, later childless loving and mourning her empty womb, failed hydroponic gardening, crumb rationing.
A sigh escaped. “I’m coming, my old bear.”
She unfastened her helmet, falling beside him.
by submission | Apr 9, 2009 | Story
Author : Daedalus
I look around, one last time, at the empty apartment and the packed bags.
One last time? Nicholas Jameson will see those old, beat-up duffels often, but I can’t think of him as being me. As being real. It isn’t my new face I see in the mirror, courtesy of Tabula Rasa’s plastic surgery, it is his. It isn’t my brand-new driver’s license in my pocket, it’s Jameson’s.
Still, I tell myself it was worth it as I begin to feel sleepy. “‘Tis better to have loved and lost…” Bullshit. What did Tennyson know about loss? Better a new life, a new person, than this wretched loser. I try to silence my doubts, but if life is so terrible without Her, how can I live without even her memory?
I won’t. Nicholas Jameson will. I’ll fall asleep, and the nanobots will go to work on my amygdala. Nicholas Jameson will wake up, happily ignorant of the breakup, the obsession, the thousand unsuccessful drinking binges…
As my eyes begin to droops, I look around desperately for a pen, for some way to tell this new person who he once was…
—
Nick Jameson woke up in the middle of leaving for a new apartment. Making a mental note to get more rest, he checked to make sure nothing was forgotten. The raise had come as a bit of a surprise, but Nick had always been a hard worker. He could hardly wait to make the spacious new apartment his home.
“Well, time for one last check,” he muttered, wandering into the small bedroom. He looked under the beds, on the bedside table, in the drawer–
Nick froze. His mouth was dry, and there was a ringing in his ears. What the hell? It was just a photograph, no doubt left by the previous occupants. Strange that he’d never noticed it. It was of a happy couple, holding hands and basking in love. It was a cheerful picture, so why did he feel so sad? It wasn’t jealousy… Meh. A mystery for another time.
Turning to leave, Nick Jameson suddenly grabbed the photo and shoved it into his pocket. No point in leaving it behind, after all.
by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
“Mama?” A tiny voice slipped quietly through the room. Between her and the woman in the bed an impenetrable forest of metal stands, tubes and blinking machinery stood guard.
“Come in sweetheart, it’s alright.” Her mother’s voice warmed the space, shushing the noisy equipment. “Mama’s alright baby, come see me.”
Clad in a pink dress and knee socks, the girl of no more than five years bravely stepped away from the safety of the door frame. Big blue eyes focused and fixed on her mother lying in the hospital bed, and her legs carried her along that line of focus until she could reach out and touch her hand.
“There, there, Mama’s all better now.” She held her daughter’s hand gently, but firmly. “The doctors made me all better. Come. Climb up here and cuddle with me.” She tried her best not to wince, shuffling a little to one side to make room. She held her one arm away so her daughter wouldn’t become tangled in the web of cords snaking away from her body.
The girl climbed cautiously up the side of the bed, nearer the foot so as to avoid the side rail, and then crawled up beside her mother and lay her head gingerly on her chest.
“Did they really take out your broken heart Mama?” She barely breathed the words.
“Yes dear, they really did.”
The girl put her ear tentatively to her mother’s chest, listening for the familiar thrub thrubbing, but there was no such noise.
“Mama?” She started and stopped.
“Yes dear?”
“Mama, can you still love me now that they took your heart away?” The words were brave, but her voice quivered.
Her mother wrapped her arms around her baby girl. “Of course I still love you. My love for you isn’t caught up in some broken old heart, it comes from everywhere.” She suppressed a gasp as the little girl squeezed her back tightly.
The girl contented herself snuggling quietly a time.
“Mama,” she said finally, “your love doesn’t rumble like thunder like it used to.” She pressed one ear again to her mothers breast, covering the other ear with a free hand. The sound rising up wasn’t the familiar steady beating she had grown with, but rather a different sound that ebbed and flowed. She squeezed her eyes shut and listened to breath being drawn in, and pushed out, and to the rhythmic rushing that kept time.
“Mama, your love whooshes like the ocean. Like the great big wide ocean.” She lay there, eyes closed and smiling, liking very much the new sounds her mother made.
Her mother lay still too, her tears also like the ocean, but adding no sound of their own.
by submission | Apr 7, 2009 | Story
Author : Gwen Harper
The math, of course, came first.
It took a while, nearly forty years, for the technology to catch up to the possibilities in her set of equations.
They said it was impossible, the body of those who considered themselves enlightened thought. Even if such a thing would work – as the numbers, indisputable, cold, facts those numbers, indicated – it would not have the effect that its creator sought.
The human mind is more than data they said, and such a rich medium of data as the human experience could not just be coded.
Even if that were possible, somehow, using some fuzziness of logic that escaped all but the best and brightest of them, it wouldn’t really be more than a simulation.
You could replicate, or so the theory went, the human personae, but you could neither store nor transfer it.
She, the grand architect, disagreed.
They told her it was tantamount to homicide. Suicide, maybe, if you believed it would merely be a copy.
Legislators seized on the whole thing. They’re good at that, those legislators. Excellent at seizing on the crux of a perceived problem and dragging out every last little bit. Clearly, said those experts legal and – ostensibly – scientific, the very notion involved the commission of a crime, but what sort of crime. Precisely where, they asked, loudly, where all could see and hear, did the ethical transgression occur?
What, precisely, could they charge her with?
She held the patents, by hook and by crook. She knew that this would work – she’d had four decades to make certain of that. It would work, precisely as she had envisioned. Injunctions were filed; long winded speeches became sound bytes on the newsfeeds.
A simple matter, on reflection, it was. And – viewed from the right perspective, something of a solution to all of humanity’s considerable ethical, spiritual, and moral problems. Not an escape, as some had proposed, but a new thing. A wholly new way of being, of existing.
Others, perhaps others closer to the architect, laid their fears down like confessions. Others questioned her judgment, if not her equation.
But how could you cast away the flesh so casually one asked.
She smiled and said you’ll see.
And so the nation and the world talked, and talked, hot air likely contributing to the enhancement of an already rosy warm climate.
As the hour drew near, and the world grew strident its belief that they could put a stop to this sort of crime, she found a sense of peace where none had existed before.
This would work, she would be the first, and it would be all hers, for as long as she felt content to hold it. Which probably wouldn’t be long, as the architect had never been a greedy woman.
They key to unlocking the code, the equation, the difference between all things had been maintaining their symmetry. In the right proportions, anything made of matter or energy could safely be changed from one to the other – the rest of it had been mitigating loss of one as it became the other.
That last night, the longest night, was all preparation. Cords and wires, and tests – countless tests, were run, attached, documented, and run again. The immense blue crystalline slab of memory was wheeled in and its backups run.
She didn’t say good bye, for it wasn’t good bye.
She dismissed them all, that small contingent that had believed in her and her work. The lights went out, and in a moment of Frankenstein glee, she threw the switch.
At 0917 pm 21 December 2036, she committed immortality.
by Patricia Stewart | Apr 6, 2009 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
“Quite frankly,” said Stuart Whitley, the Director of Operations at Computerwood, “I am not pleased with this vendetta that you’ve launched against our movies. We are clearly producing products that the public wants to see.”
“The public makes emotional judgments, not rational ones,” was the flat response of Kostas Kritikos, movie critic for the World Times.
“I think that you’re the one being irrational,” Whitley retorted. “How can you not accept the fact that computer generated movies are substantially better than the old cellulous ones? The quality is so perfect; I challenge anyone to tell the difference between a flesh and blood actor and today’s computer generated counterpart. It’s the best thing to happen to the industry since the talkies. We no longer need those pampered, spoiled brats, whining about their trailers, the hours, and so-and-so having better lines than them. We’ve also eliminated the need for sets, props, and location shoots. We’re free from weather delays, agents, and actor strikes. We produce a better product, on schedule, for less money. It’s a perfect solution, Mr. Kritikos.”
“I couldn’t disagree with you more. Your movies are a travesty. The industry has a proud heritage dating back more than 100 years. You can’t create great movies in a warehouse basement using a couple of programmers and a supercomputer.”
Whitley indicated the mammoth trophy case packed with more than one hundred golden statuettes, “That cabinet full of Oscars, Mr. Kritikos, says that you’re wrong. Besides, you’re over simplifying the process. We still have screen writers, directors, storyboard artists, concept artists, texture artists, animators, riggers, compositors, and sound designers working on every production.” He steepled his fingers. “Let’s cut to the chase, Mr. Kritikos. What’s your real problem with our pictures?”
“Since you’ve asked, it’s what you’ve done to the classics. Shirley Temple playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Ronald Reagan staring in Casablanca rather than Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper playing Rhett Butler, and Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones. For the love of God man, have you no decency? Those movies are the very heart and soul of Hollywood, and you’ve desecrated them.”
Whitley smiled. “Each of those people was the director’s first choice to play those leading roles. We’re letting the public see the movies that could… no, should have been. For all intents and purposes, Mr. Kritikos, our remakes are exactly what would have been released had the directors had the actors that they initially wanted. Tell me Mr. Kritikos, what can I do to convince you to write a favorable review?”
“There is nothing that you can do,” Kritikos roared. “I will fight these abominations with ever fiber in my body. Mark my words Whitley, you create one more of these vile remakes, and I’ll spend the rest of my life…”
Whitley cut him off, “That will be all, Mr. Kritikos. I’ve got what I needed. Your services are no longer required.”
“What? My services? What are you talking about? I don’t work for you.”
“Ah, but you do, Mr. Kritikos. You see, Computerwood is doing research into new product lines. As a consequence, we needed advanced feedback from the public, including movie critics. Unfortunately, Mr. Kritikos, you’re not a real person. Our programmers created you so that we didn’t have to actually hire a pompous, overpaid critic. Funny, isn’t it? Our characters are so perfect; they don’t even realize that they’re just a simulation. Computer, end ‘Critic 12’ program.”
An instant later, Kritikos faded away, his mouth still open.
