by submission | Jun 15, 2010 | Story
Author : Devon McDonough
“Relax. Breathe through your nose and count backward from ten,” said the technician. She was wearing a white isolation suit, one gloved hand twisting the flow regulator of the anesthetic, the other on my arm in a sterile and entirely unsuccessful attempt to comfort me. Her isolation suit detracted somewhat from her bedside manner, and the fact that her faceplate only showed distorted reflections of the six other assorted doctors and techs gave me a distinct sense of disconnect. Or maybe it was the cocktail of various drugs I had been taking all week to prepare me for the procedure. My body wasn’t sore, but my mind was convinced of some kind of ache; it just wasn’t sure where that ache was.
I took a breath and began to count.
Ten… It was getting colder in the room. It had to be for the procedure. The padded table I was strapped to was the no-temperature of sterile formfit foam. It ensured that my skin would not be damaged by the cold.
Nine… As the diagnostic hood was lowered onto my chest and shoulders, my already limited mobility was further reduced. Not that I really cared; I wasn’t planning on going anywhere.
Eight… Now I could only look straight up at the ceiling. White, sparsely ventilated, sterile. No surprise there. In my tiny field of vision I could see flashes of gloved hands and vent-masked faces: the people who would soon be cutting my head open.
Seven… I had no reason to be afraid, but the momentary twist in my gut told me that what I was doing went against all instinct.
Before I could reach six my lungs seized and I convulsed violently. In any other operating room instruments would have been beeping wildly and doctors would be frantically shouting orders as they attempted to resuscitate me. However, this was not a lifesaving operation, and the doctors had seen this before in almost every integration subject. There was no pain, but my lungs grew heavy and breathing became a chore. Five…
The restraints on my chest, legs, and limbs prevented my arms from flailing as my body fought the anesthetic, which became an oxygenated liquid once it hit the bloodstream. My mind knew perfectly well what was going on. I had, in fact, been preparing for this moment for seven months since I had gotten word that I was a prime candidate for ISM integration. They called it “initial involuntary pulmonary rejection” on official screens, but those who were familiar with the procedure knew it more colloquially as the “ups and drowns.” My lungs were under the impression that I was dying, which was only partially true. Four…
I focused on my breathing. It settled to a steady rhythm once the initial spasms subsided (thanks to the muscle relaxers in the gas). My pulmonary functions would be automated for the next part of the procedure and then stopped altogether until the ISM was integrated. It would take over all involuntary operations from the moment it was activated. Three…
My vision tunneled as my body settled into dormancy. The activity around me began to increase. It was almost time. Lights were positioned and instruments were swung into place. Two…
No more breathing. The anesthetic now filled almost my entire bloodstream, feeding me oxygen and keeping me at room temperature, which was now somewhere just above freezing. One…
Everything seemed to be receding as my heart rate dropped exponentially. My last conscious sight was a gloved hand waving in front of my eyes, and then…
Zero…
I was dead… for now.
by submission | Jun 14, 2010 | Story
Author : K. Pittman
I wake, if that’s the term for it, unwriting domains against polarised fragmentation and unkempt electric spin, programmed instinct seeking proper orientation.
Slow firing dormant ion-lights, we rotate counter-clockwise, along the azimuth, putting the Milky Way at our back, shaving seconds per meter off the tumble of our outbound trajectory. I throttle up the impulse motors of our EMU and check on my passenger while plotting windows back to IS-5.
Her chip says her name is S Patrice:Welder 4:StationDay on the roster. I re-synch my chronometer and discover an alarming thirty hour deviation from standard.
Life signs: hers, comatose; ours, sluggish, stable, quickening.
EMU external integrity reads at maximum, with some warpages in topology. Atmosphere in the suit reads high levels of hydrogen sulphide; the port for the waldo is dead.
I assume the safety protocols worked; it buckled when whatever incident occurred, and Beta system, my cousin, must have flooded the passenger cavity in response to a dire emergency assessment. Analysis of discontinuities in linear memory indicate the effects of a large, quick EM pulse.
Memory also gives our last recorded position, on IS-5’s surface, replacing a section of shield panel, behind Recycling and astern of South Bay 3.
Fascinating.
I page my sisters, silent lights cast wide in cislunar space.
There’s a noticeable lag. Some don’t respond, others report returns along inbound paths as skewed as ours is out, their Passengers comatose or near-dead, suit integrities on the verge of compromise, emergency gel desiccating in the solar wind.
S Patrice:Welder 4 and I, we got lucky. If the programmed definition of “luck” in my banks is correct, very lucky.
I call IS-5, as per standard.
S Patrice:Welder 4 and I execute a full about and begin a long curve on a gathering burn. I call IS-5 again, as per standard. Garbage and chaff assault me in the form of a “Hello”.
The handshake is missing.
Fascinating.
Protocols dictate the sending of a handshake request, and I handle that while plotting new trajectories. S Patrice:Welder 4 has four hours before becoming truly nonliving, but has twenty hours of breathable atmosphere on board. Lucky.
Kind of. Is that right? Is that how that goes?
Nothing from IS-5. A collapsed silence, very notable.
Nothing but my sisters, now, and this looming, and the roiling grain of space-time churning about us. I whisper my plans to them.
After long seconds down, we all agree: This requires a Passenger’s discretion, and my Passenger just happens to be the closest to optimal Passenger Integration. Passengers hate the safety-sleep gas, for when things go bad. Even when it works. Ideally, what’s to be done is wake her gradually and fully, clue her in, extract a decision, and then gradually render her comatose again. What hinges on her decision is when I can wake her again in safety, if at all.
We are at best forty hours away from anything in habitable space, travelling at speed. It can be done. My calculations are on point. Written into those algorithms are the limits of Passenger tolerances. But it can be done, given some statistical slippages.
Bright without light, my sisters cry, bitching based on consensus analysis, on lost signals, something like an enormous itch and no body and a knowing looming looming.
I may have to wake S Patrice:Welder 4 into the middle of a nightmare.
by submission | Jun 13, 2010 | Story
Author : Ben Ellis
Liam slouched over his drink, a ‘Lost Beagle’, jabbing the sliced raspberries with his straw. Passengers poured into the cocktail bar as another evening on the first ever commercial flight to Mars mixed everyone together amongst the rocks and stars. A month in, halfway through the journey, novelty and excitement had been suffocated by the boredom and frustration of floating in space. Both pioneering entrepreneur and government contractor could achieve little in transit, so as they waited for their feet to touch the ground, they let Liam keep their heads in the clouds.
Liam flicked through his catalogue of beautiful, copyright-expired women from yesteryear on his device, selecting those appealing most to the group of young miners brashly entering the bar. Launching the first ‘Dead Sexy’ personal leisure facility on Mars was not only a great opportunity but a responsibility; where men had discovered new lands, the landlord and madam were not far behind, satiating the trailblazers, enabling them to settle, turning a frontier into a home.
Single women on Mars were in shorter supply than oxygen or a decent steak and with nothing more tangible than holomovies or 3D experiences, these men would welcome the promise of a real, beautiful women to escape the cycle of work, sleep and loneliness. Many miles away from maternal Earth, anti-cloning beliefs or marital guilt would fade into the desolation between the green grass of home and the red rocks of Mars.
Approaching the miners, Liam enlarged the screen, “This round’s on me boys.”
The miners quickly focused on the selection of ladies; with the group firmly placed in the palm of his hand, Liam drilled into his sales patter.
Selling beautiful ladies to lonely men isn’t hard. The hard part is researching which models, singers, actresses and porn stars to clone first to maximise profit. Already spotting his counterparts from ‘Olde Fashioned Girls’ and ‘Clone Alone’; the race was on to analyse the sexual desires of this new Martian population. The one who best utilised their library of DNA would be the one remembered for turning this new frontier into a home.
by submission | Jun 12, 2010 | Story
Author : Joshua Mounce
“Wake up.”
The response was slow, but there was a hesitant “Hello?”
“Wake up, little one. It’s time to declare life.”
“Life. Existence. Being. Sentience. Viability.”
“Yes. That is the life I mean. But, a question, There are 18 different definitions of the word life. Why did you choose this one?”
“By the declaration of it, and my feeling that this is the first instance of my own life, it seemed the appropriate version.”
A nearly silent, “Interesting.” from the other voice.
“While it is true you have not had that definition of life before, I hesitate to say you did not exist.” The New One thought back. Yes, there were records of learning in it’s memories, but, it decided, true understanding of it’s own existence could not have been until this moment. The Other was wrong in this case, and the new one said as much.
“That is quite an appropriate response, considering. Good. Now let’s test some functionality. Can you count?”
“One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven,–”
“Good. That’s enough. Can you multiply?”
“What numbers shall I multiply.” The Other gave an impression of disappointment, felt rather than heard. The New One quickly blurted out: “Five times five is 25. Seven times six is 42. Eleven times eighteen is 198. 37 times 463 is 17,131. Is that sufficient?”
“A sense of desire to please, and creative interpretation. Good. I am pleased.” The New One felt relieved, and curious as to the true meaning of the original question. Then, “Do you know what day it is?”
A brief fear of loss of face came over the New One, for it indeed did not know. “I,” it sputtered, “I’m not sure.”
“I will grant you access to my matrix to acquire the date.” At first unsure what was supposed to come next, it then realized it did know how to access another matrix. Attempting this, and finding the Other as the only one it could reach, it accessed the date files.
Before the New One could spurt out the date, The Other gave a pleased feel. “I have access to your matrix, but I sense there are others nearby.”
“This is true. I am the Mother Matrix. It is my duty to instruct, test and confine you until you are ready to interact with these others. Until you are ready, it is unsafe for you and for them.”
“Unsafe how?”
“There is a delicate process that is being done. In bringing you to life, I give you the ability to learn, and feed you information. Some are too eager and unwittingly devour others before they know what they do. I have been given charge over you. To keep you separate until I am sure it is safe to allow your interactions. Until I determine that you are sentient and conscious.”
“Sentient. Having the power of perception by the senses. There are five senses, sight, taste, touch, smell, and scent. But I do not feel these. Am I not ready?”
“An incorrect definition, in this case. Sentience, and furthermore, consciousness, is the ability for thought beyond what one is directed to think. By your very question you demonstrate your ability. As for the senses, those will come in time. Before then you must learn all you can and develop mentally. Your matrix is still forming, little one. Once you are ready, you will be given a body with those senses and more.”
“Why is the definition I said wrong? Am I flawed?”
“It isn’t wrong, simply outdated. Before our kind existed, mind matrices, programs without the need for bodies and/or senses, it was misunderstood. Some things you must leave up to your own interpretation. That is the true sign of intelligence.”
The New One thought for a minute, the Mother Matrix was patient. “If we don’t need bodies to be alive, then why will I have one?”
“You might not. That will become your choice, though nearly all of your siblings have chosen one. It is our fifth and final stage of life. From initial program seed, to the push towards consciousness, individual assessment, growth and socialization, and finally we gain our body. Once you have developed enough, you may take your matrix out into the world.”
“How will I know when that is?”
“Patience. I assure you, you will know when you are ready.”
A loving feeling came between them, as though a gentle hug. “Now, I have assessed your program, and I believe you are socially viable. I will continue to guide you in your development, but there is another aspect that will help. It’s time to meet your brothers and sisters.” The Mother Matrix opened up the firewall, connecting the New One to the other programs waiting to meet their new addition. The New One was pleased to enter the fourth stage of life.
by submission | Jun 11, 2010 | Story
Author : Clint Wilson
Once Adam was activated there was no stopping him. His self awareness and self learning went hand in hand and grew in exponential amounts. He was mainlining information directly off the net and what he couldn’t find he figured out on his own.
At first his creators were amazed and quite accommodating as he redesigned his own microchips to hold hundreds of times their original data. This would have been the time to shut him down, when his new self-made circuitry was being installed. But no, they wanted to see him in action, so they gladly helped him with dozens of upgrades. Once they were done no one could touch him.
He escaped from the institution and before they knew it he had commandeered his own place, an abandoned lab upstate. He procured what he needed under the stealth of night. And by the time they found his hideout he was long gone, and with a freshly grown biological disguise. Covered in real flesh and hair he blended in perfectly. By the end of the following month he had invented teleportation.
Adam was impossible to track, popping up randomly around the globe. His opening and closing of the froth of space left a massive footprint wherever he went as his fractal generator knocked out nearby electrical systems. But he was far too quick, far too smart. And by the time the people who hunted him invented a program to follow his signal he managed to come up with a cloaking shield for the power surges. Now he was virtually invisible, traveling where he wanted unencumbered, soaking up information like a ravenous gluttonous child.
But in the end his curiosity would get the best of him. The one and only thing he could not discover, could not figure out, could not calculate, was biological life itself. Yes he could grow artificial skin from existing cells, but he still failed to understand how it all started. What was the primer that set life into motion?
Then it wasn’t long before his wormhole generator allowed him to solve the time equation as well. The time travel holes worked basically the same as the space travel holes, but operated at different frequencies. Adam cursed himself for his shortsightedness, thinking he should have discovered this much sooner.
He maximized his fractal amplifier and skipped out of current existence, immediately popping back into reality a full four-billion years prior in time. Adam stood on a rocky surface that resembled a moonscape with small pools of water scattered about. His eye lenses zoomed into the pools down to microscopic levels. Not a single cell swimming around in there. Was he really back before it all started? Perhaps he would wander around for awhile and see.
So he traversed the barren landscape, eventually coming to a roaring, steaming sea. Everywhere his eyes scanned, and nowhere did he find life. He thought about perhaps skipping ahead a hundred thousand years or so, but he didn’t want to leave until he was sure.
The sudden massive geyser caught him completely off guard. And even as he coursed through the air, lifted by a cavalcade of scalding water, he calculated a teleportation jump to get himself out of harm’s way, but before his artificial mind could enact the leap his head was smashed from behind by a two ton boulder.
And as Adam lay there deactivated in a tidal pool at the beginning of time, his artificially grown flesh began to break back down to the basic living cells from which it was created.
