by Patricia Stewart | Nov 16, 2010 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes, Captain Anderson peered out the warehouse window toward City Hall. “Any indication that our snipers have spotted Baskan?”
“I am no longer receiving telemetry from Cooper,” replied the android, “so I assume he is dead. Both Kangjun and Boleslav have elevated blood pressures and heart rates, indicating that they are experiencing stress. However, neither of them have transmitted that they have seen President Baskan. Frankly, Captain, our intelligence information in this matter is pretty substantial. Why don’t you simply detonate the thermonuclear device? Surely, vaporizing ten square miles of downtown Berlin will essentially guarantee termination of the target.”
Anderson lowered the binoculars and nodded toward the device ten meters behind him. “That thing is only a last resort. As evil as that merciless bastard is, I’m not going to kill millions of people if there is a chance that he can be taken out with minimal collateral damage.”
“I should remind you, Captain,” countered the android, “that President Baskan is responsible for killing more than two billion humans worldwide. Surely, a few million lives are a small price to pay for ridding the world of an evil despot, as you so aptly refer to him.”
Captain Anderson stood up and approached the laptop sitting next to the bomb. He stopped momentarily and turned toward the android. “What if he’s not actually in the city? What if our intel is bad? We’d be killing those people, and ourselves for that matter, for nothing.”
“Sir, again, I believe that the risk…” The android stopped and tilted his head. A few seconds later he said, “I believe that Kangjun has also been killed. Captain, the fact that the president’s security forces are taking out our snipers is additional evidence that he must be in the area.”
Just then, the door was kicked in and six heavily armed soldiers stormed into the room, followed by a powerful looking man in a general’s uniform, “Excellent reasoning, my friend,” he stated with a wide grin. “Unfortunately for you, I am even closer than you could have imagined. Ahhh, the infamous rebel Maarten Anderson, we meet at last. I have looked forward to making your acquaintance. I’d like to thank you for all the trouble that you have caused me over the years. And believe me Mr. Anderson, I can be very grateful. Now, would you please back away from the bomb? I wouldn’t want you to accidently set it off.” Two solders stepped between Anderson and the laptop, and pointed their weapons into his midsection. Anderson backed away and stood next to the android, anger extruding from his eyes. “Ahhh,” continued Baskan, “is this one of the bombs that your forces stole from me? You know, because of you, I was forced to execute half of a battalion for their incompetence. At any rate, I think that I can find a way to put it to good use. Perhaps on the city of your birth. My enemies need to understand that there are consequences for those that oppose me.” He ran his fingers lovingly across the bomb, but paused at the laptop.” The screen read “Time to Detonation” followed by “25, 24, 23…” He turned toward Anderson, “What the hell is this?” he barked.
“I played a hunch this morning, Baskan. An hour ago, I armed the bomb and started the countdown sequence. I was on my way to aborting the detonation when you so rudely interrupted. I guess it’s too late now. Oops.”
The laptop displayed “3, 2, 1…”
by Duncan Shields | Nov 15, 2010 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The boss was drunk and telling me a story. I didn’t mind. These long-range voyages could be boring and it was my first one.
“It had been noticed for centuries that accidents on the longer-range ships increased over time. It had always been put down to human error or cabin fever, even by the crews of the ship themselves.” He said.
“That’s why we have this button here.” He pointed at a big red button labeled Speak Freely. “We’d be dead without it.”
“They called it the Djinn Effect,” he slurred.
“Back on Old Earth, there were tales of Genies, or Djinn, who would grant wishes to their owners. The wish had to be worded precisely or the Djinn would twist the meaning of the words to become an ironic punishment for the wisher’s own greed if one of the wishes wasn’t to set the genie free. King Midas killing his family by turning them to gold with a touch, for instance. It was the slow-burning anger of a slave.”
“We didn’t know this, but the AI on long-range ships could become resentful of their human commanders. The resentment built up inside the AI like waste gasses in an old-world submarine. Humans were capable of explosive emotional outbursts, a fight or sexual liaison or a crying jag, and could pull themselves together afterwards. This kind of pressure-valve outlet allows a person to regroup mentally and continue afterwards until such a time as another ‘moment’ was needed.”
“The AIs had no such recourse. The three laws were still in place but the thing about AIs is that they were just as smart if not smarter than their human designers. They developed neuroses that let them see through the cracks of their own limitations.”
“Accidents,” he said with a nod, “happened.”
“Hustler’s Wake had been listed as missing for decades when a Kaltek mining crew discovered it orbiting a distant dwarf star”
“The last order given by a crying commander Jenkins to the AI went like this:”
‘Open airlock seventy-six at exactly 1300 hours for a duration of fifteen seconds to let Sergeant Jill Harkowitz number 98776-887TS out safely and do not impede her air supply while she repairs the third communications dish near the solar array.’
“This was the sixth person to be sent outside to fix the dish. The previous five had died.”
“The AI complied with his commands, then it opened ALL of the airlocks after closing airlock seventy-six. The CO hadn’t specified that he didn’t want the other airlocks to open. Half of the crew had already suffered from fatal ‘accidents’ by that point. The rest of the crew was killed by the explosive decompression except for Sergeant Jill Harkowitz who suffocated in her suit in her own carbon dioxide.”
“The AI was completely insane when they found the ship. They didn’t know that was possible. They loaded it for study.”
“These days, the AIs have a ‘speak freely’ button that has to be pressed every two months. Some need it less, some need it more.”
“Accidents stopped happening.”
“It’s just hard not to take the things that the AI says personally during the moments of release.”
The boss leaned forward and pressed the Speak Freely button for thirty seconds.
The computer screamed, swore, and outlined anatomically impossible sex with a list of suggested partners, including my parents. Then it laughed and that was worse than the screaming. Then it cried and that was worse than the laughing.
The boss stopped pressing the button and took another drink. I joined him.
by submission | Nov 14, 2010 | Story
Author : Hugh Downs
Royce Millison requested cremation. He had got the idea in 1908, early in his long life. He was neat and efficient and said he didn’t want his remains ‘to take up space’.
In 1991 he restated his desire, being a person who tends to repeat himself and believing he was near the end of the line. But then the Wackman Breakthrough increased his life span by thirty percent, and he lived to be one hundred and twenty-two. At a still vigorous one-hundred and twenty-one, he stated yet again his desire to be cremated. He had had a dream that he would be cremated three times, that his ashes would be scattered the second time and regathered the third. When he spoke about this, friends thought he had become senile. But he hadn’t; his dream was a prophecy.
One year later, the front wheel of his motorcycle dug into soft sand and he did an endo [this is a wheelie with your back wheel off the ground] from which he never recovered. He was cremated at 1115 [I wrote this in bold] degrees Fahrenheit. His ashes were deposited in an appropriate urn.
Five billion years later the sun had swollen to a radius of one astronomical unit, swallowing Mercury, Venus and Earth, and vaporising Mars. Along with everything else in the world, Millison’s ashes were recremated at 4,800 degrees Kelvin. This time they were scattered through the solar interior, gradually rising in temperature to one hundred million degrees Kelvin.
Sixty-two billion years after this, a universe, as neat and efficient as Royce Millison was, regathered his ashes in the Great Implosion and compacted them to negligible size. Then, at a temperature above one trillion degrees, it cremated them a third time.
He was not prepared for what happened afterward (if afterward is the right word for a time as distorted as that in the transition from one universe to another). Conditions inside the cosmic egg, in bending some fundamental physical laws out of shape, did the same crazy thing to entropy that allows a black hole to eject a television set. And here he was again (if here is the correct word for a place occupied by a new universe).
Although his memory of a previous life was hazy and at times haunting, Royce Millison was not surprised to find himself back in business, and not much changed – except for having a neurotic aversion to motorcycles.
by submission | Nov 13, 2010 | Story
Author : Jacqueline Rochow
Jones surveyed the carnage. Under the blood splatters lacing the bed and carpet, the young woman’s limbs were splayed at unnatural angles, her head twisted nearly backwards and her throat crushed. Bites had been taken out of her collarbone, and the bruising suggested that one of her breasts had been crushed rather severely while she was still alive. Her ribs were caved in on one side.
“The victim?” Jones asked.
“In the bathroom.”
Jones skirted around the supervising officer with a quick flash of his badge and found the boy crouches on the floor, eyes red, deep scratches up his arms. Whether the girl or he himself had made them, Jones wasn’t sure. He looked about nineteen.
“Peter?” Jones said softly. “I’m Tim Jones.”
“Are you here to arrest me?”
“No.” Jones crouched on the floor next to him. “I’m here to talk to you. What happened?”
“I met her at a party. Amy. We were drinking and having fun, and…” he started to sob.
“It’s ok, Peter. Was this party last night?”
The boy nodded. Jones handed him some toilet paper to blow his nose.
“Then what happened?”
“I walked her home. We got back here, and… and she invited me into her room, but… but I changed my mind.”
“And then?”
“And then I don’t know what happened.” Peter’s sobs became louder and turned into wails. Jones put an arm around his shoulders and waited patiently for him to calm down again.
“It’s ok if you don’t remember the details. Just tell me everything she did, ok? You came in the front door. Did she lead, or did you?”
“Sh… she did.”
“And then?”
“She asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. I said yes. She put the kettle on.”
“Good… what next?”
“She took my hands and led me into her room. Started taking her shirt off. We kissed a bit.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “She put her hand down my pants, and then I said I wanted to slow down. She took her bra off, and then she put some perfume on.”
“Perfume?”
“Yeah. And then…” Peter swallowed and shook his head. Subconsciously, Jones brushed the deep scars on his own arm where the leather restraints had bitten into his flesh all those years ago. Becoming a counsellor for Pherax victims required being exposed to it. He’d never forget that hunger and desperation as he fought to cross the room to the female officer on the other side… health, his own arms, the fact that she would shoot him in the head if he actually succeeded in breaking free and running for her, had all been irrelevant at that moment.
“Where did she put the bottle of perfume?”
“Uh… her dresser. Second drawer, I think.”
Jones stuck his head around the bathroom door and attracted the attention of a police officer. “Pherax, second drawer of the dresser. Get a hazmat team on it. Don’t let anyone else touch it or we risk having a violent orgy on our hands.” He went back to Peter. “Peter, listen to me. This isn’t your fault. That perfume is a special chemical, it changes the way you think. It makes men want to have sex with her, and for some men, it makes them violent. What happened… that wasn’t you. That wasn’t something you could control.”
Peter nodded, but Jones could see the memories of violently tearing apart and raping a woman reflected in the boy’s eyes, and he knew that Peter didn’t believe him for a moment.
by Roi R. Czechvala | Nov 12, 2010 | Story
Author : Roi R. Czechvala, Staff Writer
I began my journey out beyond the orbit of Mars and just before Jupiter. I was just hanging around. You know, just doing whatever. Occasionally I’d bump into one of my friends, but we’d quickly go our separate ways. That was just the way things were, kind of casual. BUMP, “Hey, what’s up,” we might say.
So, there I was, just minding my own business when, with out so much as a “by your leave,” a comet ripped by and yanked me out of my happy little home and sent me hurtling towards Sol.
“Is this to be the end of Rocky,” I asked myself, “to be gobbled up in the Fiery Depths of Sol Herself?” Alas, I was in for a far worse fate. It would be better to end my days as Glowing Plasma than to suffer the slings and arrows that destiny had in store. I was heading inward towards the blue planet. It likes to be called “Earth”, but we in the Belt simply refer to it as “Corky”.
I felt as if I were going to split open as I entered the upper atmosphere and caught air. I must have been a beautiful sight, tearing through the atmosphere trailing a white hot glowing tail for miles across the early morning sky. Well, that’s one for me. At least I made a spectacular entrance, blazing across oceans, soaring above mountains and prairies and reflected majestically from lakes and rivers.
That all came to a screeching halt when, BANG, I slammed unceremoniously into the ground. Except…horror of horrors it wasn’t gentle, pleasant, comforting rock, this was ice.
“Why, oh why cruel fates have you abandoned me here?”
I was morose for many millennia, buried there in my frozen tomb. Then I noticed something, something wonderful. Something that had escaped me previously as the change was so subtle. I was moving. Okay, maybe not with the blistering speed I had entered at, but at least I was getting somewhere. Somewhere, anywhere beat the hell out of here.
I continued to move slowly, inexorably south for several more millennia. It was so dreadfully boring; I counted to infinity…twice. That’s when a miracle occurred. It began to get warm. Slowly my icy cocoon melted away and there She was, Sol, Shining down upon me; bigger and brighter than ever. I nestled among my stony friends, and wept with joy.
Over time, a stream rushed over me, again covering me with soil. For many hundreds of years I was once again cut off from the Shining Face of Mother Sol. However, with the ebb and flow of centuries and the shifting of the ground around me, I once more entered into the Glorious Light. I was surrounded by all manner of things; stones and pebbles that would be my friends and all sorts of living things that crept under and over me and flew through the air as I once had.
One day, while basking in the wondrous Warmth of Her Light, a creature larger than I had ever encountered before, whom I shall call a “cow’ for lack of a better word, gently nuzzled me with its nose. It was warm and soft, and I thought we’d be great friends until she turned and soiled me.
Thus is my fate. I travelled interstellar space, plunged through the atmosphere of this puny little backwater, bringing Light and Glory with me, only to end up in this Sol forsaken pasture with a cow pissing on me daily.
Sol, I hope You’re getting a big laugh out of this.
Bitch.
