by Clint Wilson | Dec 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
“Indestructabuddies! They’re completely indestructible! Drop them from skyscrapers, throw them into traffic! Freeze them, burn them, blow them up reeeal good! Indestructabuddies, your new best friend who will last you forever and ever and ever and ever…….”
On echoed the announcer’s blasting intrusive voice.
And the middle and upper classes ate it up with gusto. Soon nearly everyone who could afford the hefty price had an Indestructabuddy of their own. The half-meter tall humanoid marvels were identical to one another. Silvery gray from their bald heads to their naked chubby feet, and basically featureless; their smooth faces, devoid of eyes, yet indented where one might normally find them, a bump of a nose without nostrils, and the vague shape of a mouth capable of smiling, frowning or performing various other expressions of human mimickery. They were without visible hinge or joint, their smooth skin shiny like rubber, they moved about with mechanical ease in their rolls as likable and amiable companions to the affluent. In cities around the world Indestructabuddies splashed in fountains, frolicked in parks, and skipped behind their owners.
Their intelligence was limited to their ability to obey and follow simple commands, almost doglike in nature. But the advertisement’s proclamation was true. Indestructabuddies were truly and utterly, indestructible. Oh, people had tried with all their might to disprove this, luring the happy-go-lucky animatrons into countless dangerous situations, even strapping one to a nuclear warhead during a detonation test. After the mushroom cloud had dissipated and the dust had settled, the unscathed Indestructabuddy had come happily trundling out of the wasteland unaffected.
This was what had world governments suddenly so very interested in this phenomenon that had, up until recently, seemed an advanced toy, nothing more than a cultural novelty. Questions were raised. What was behind their technology? Who was their inventor? Had they even passed through all safety standards testing?
Their creator was also the head of the corporation that produced them by the hundreds every day. Gerhardt Gower was a mediocre scientist with a low level degree in robotics. The limited intelligence and intellectual ability of his popular creations were actually typical for a man with his level of expertise trying to make his way in the competitive modern android market. But what had government agents and other interested parties completely baffled was how this middle-of-the-road inventor had somehow come up with these unfathomable other technologies all on his own, technologies that now had militaries all over the world drooling.
Gower himself admitted that his discovery had been accidental, a major fluke to say the least. But he would not divulge the secret that gave his little robots such indestructibility, and powered their bodies perpetually without recharge, only hinting that he had somehow harnessed the infinite power of the subatomic microverse.
After months and then years of court battles and the professor’s continuous refusal to talk, his factory was shut down, the further sale of Indestructabuddies outlawed. And then some genius of a high court actually ordered to have Gower’s products rounded up and destroyed. It was a short-lived and fruitless campaign. As, even though indestructible, the human race protected their little companions fiercely. In the end the governments had to admit defeat.
Especially after Gerhardt Gower got the last laugh, destroying himself along with his factory in a massive explosion, his manufacturing machines, his plans, his secrets, all gone with him forever. And then as the ashes settled to the ground and the smoke dissipated, the final hundred-thousand Indestructabuddies marched out into the world unscathed, ready to join their millions of siblings, ready to exist forever.
by Duncan Shields | Dec 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
My mount is about an acre across from wingtip to wingtip.
I’m sitting between her eyes, up near the front. I have a windshield set up, sheltering my sleeping quarters, replicator, garden, fridge, toilet bag and pilot’s chair.
She’s the colour of sand stretching away on either side of me, the same colour as the sky.
This is an ocean planet. There are beings that spend their entire lives in the oceans and there are beings that spend their entire lives in the air.
I am riding the latter.
She coasts for weeks at a time around the air currents, eating the occasional minnowbird or troutflyer that crosses her path.
When she needs to really feed, she’ll angle down into a steep dive to the ocean surface. We’re so high up that it takes her half an hour to get down there. Her mouth opens wide enough to eat a small town on old Earth as she rips apart the waves on impact and dives deep to feed on anything moving.
I’m not there for this part of her life. I’d die in the chemical waters.
The beings that we ride need to sleep and mate before they feed.
I’m looking through the windshield and sitting in my chair. I can see on the overlay that a linkup is happening six miles from here.
She angles west through soft summer winds and clouds. She’s heading to that pack.
These beings meet up and extend small talons from the tips of their enormous wings. The interlock these talons and form giant islands in the skies. Fifty or sixty of them at a time.
She’ll hang onto her mates and close her eyes. During this time, mating fluids will pass between the couplings. It’s a giant orgy, to be precise, albeit one with no motion and almost entirely done while sleeping.
During this time, we riders have the chance to stand and stretch our legs. We walk across the wingspans to each other’s cockpits to chat and share stories. For some of us, it’s a chance to reunite with old lovers, catch up with stories.
We’ll set up camps on the strongest flyers and have small parties.
There are six hundred thousand of us riders. We’re linked by the windshields when we’re apart but it’s these gatherings that really define our lives.
One can never tell what people will be at a gathering, dictated as they are by the winds our flyers glide on. We count ourselves lucky if there are old friends.
One by one, the gliders will disengage and dive low to the ocean to feed. They’ll return when full, impatient to get back to flying the skies.
We get a signal when our mount’s biogram tells us that it’s time to disengage. We return to our mounts and strap in. Our mounts unhook their mating talons and we angle away, ready for another solitary chapter of gliding in the endless sky above the endless ocean.
This meetup is the first one I’ve been to in over a month and a half. My mount must be starving. From the pings I’ve receiving on my windshield, Jenna and Steve will be there. Sarah, too. She’s recent. I haven’t seen Jared in six meetups now and that makes me sad. I hope he’s there.
I can see it in the distance now, a horizon-smudge flatland in the sky where I’ll get to say hello to old friends and maybe meet some new ones.
by Julian Miles | Dec 4, 2012 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I am a rifle.
There are few like me, but I am unique.
I will fire true.
I will fire straighter than any other.
I know that only hitting the target counts.
I will maintain myself clean and ready.
I will defend my country.
I will master the enemy.
The creed runs through my frontal RAM as it always does, because they think it helps.
“Camera One, pan the crowd.”
That is my confirmation. I leave the gathering quietly, entering the stairwell using the card from the security guard I left sleeping in the toilets.
Letting the door close I kill the biomass masquerading as my heart and extend my tibia and humerus, then leap into the gap between the staircases and progress rapidly upward, something only my extended reach permits. Intense security leaves holes. In this case, detecting for life signs in the stairway and movement on the stairs, not dead things moving in the gap between them. Foolishly they considered a metre-wide, sixty storey drop secure.
I slide to the edge of the parapet and reform. My vertebrae alternately revolve ninety degrees to lock, while my head cants back and swings up to locate above where oesophagus-muffler has risen to align with spine-barrel, as my lower jaw bifurcates to become the bipod. My left femur rotates and swings back, feeding a 13mm long cartridge into the breech that forms my sacral curve, while my arms swing out to stabilise my incline, counterbalanced by my extended right leg.
My Zeiss-lensed eyes feed compensated targeting data to the dedicated math processor that handles all the windage and other variables in less time than it takes Senator Lindham’s bodyguard to open the door of the limousine.
As his head rises into view, I wait until I see the carotid pulse in his neck in my holographic cross matrix. I exhale death and his head explodes. I use the recoil to slide back, letting my head drop forward as I disengage my osteo-locks and deform. I roll off the parapet and sprint across the roof as alarms start. I dive from the back of the building, sixty storeys up giving me the angle to plunge into the deep end of the public pool across the road and a block down. Water pours from me and startled lovers exclaim, but I am gone over the fence and into the bushes. As I climb the tree by the next road over, the evening run to the recycling plant is passing. I leap from the tree into the back of the truck, amongst metals and electricals that will mask my presence, just as the pool eradicated all detectable miasma of rifle shot. I may have left some pieces of overskin, but it leads back to the only man who had cloneable cells, like every other piece of vatflesh on this planet.
On the slip road to the industrial estate that surrounds the plant, a rescue and recovery hauler sits. I drop from the back of the recycler and roll under the hauler, pulling myself through the belly hatch into my residence.
William says: “Fine work, Swan.”
He means it. He only ever uses my nickname over my designation, S-One, when he’s exceptionally pleased. Which means Ruger-Sony are paying him a lot, again.
I settle into a solvent bath and idle my processors. After I’m clean I’ll upload the mission log. As I am scoured, I run my creed in private RAM.
I am Sniper One.
I never miss.
by featured writer | Dec 3, 2012 | Story |
Author : Desmond Hussey, Featured Writer
“That’ll be two-thousand kilowatts,” the droopy eyed clerk said when he finished scanning Sarah’s purchase. She held out her debit battery, which was running depressingly low; prayed she had enough. The clerk barely looked at her as he snagged the black, glossy storage unit and slid it into the transfer terminal. A light blinked momentarily then went solid green. She breathed a sigh of relief.
Sarah retrieved her depleted battery, packed her purchase carefully into her backpack, shouldered it and stepped outside into thick, muggy air.
The treeless streets were crowded with a shuffling throng of pedestrians and commuters on bicycles. Very few internal combustion autos were on the roads these days since fuel prices had skyrocketed. Electric vehicles were also rare, used exclusively by obscenely wealthy power brokers. Since electricity had become the standard currency, it was considered frivolous to use so much energy to commute. Even the most efficient electric automobile consumed enough kilowatts in a short fifty kilometer trip to buy a family food for an entire week.
Sarah glanced up at the sky. Overcast. Again. Which meant the solar collector on her patio would barely be charging. Sunny days were rare, but when they happened, the whole world was rejuvenated, basking in the sun’s generous outpouring of energy. Pale faces showed a hint of color. Batteries charged. Pennies from heaven.
But today, the slate grey sky was reflected in the slack faces of the desultory mob, which moved like an ocean, flowing in strange Brownian currents to myriad destinations.
She passed a communal dinning hall where she would normally have eaten a meager dinner, but she was low on kilowatts. The smell of spiced lentils made her stomach growl. She moved on.
She passed the crowded mag-rail station and envied those who could afford to ride it. She felt the weight of the parcel in her pack and fought a brief pang of guilt. If she hadn’t spent so much on a frivolous luxury she could ride home. Her legs ached after a long day pedaling the bicycle which powered the lights at the slaughterhouse. Perhaps tomorrow she would find a better job. A waitress in one of those fancy restaurants. Or a garbage collector. Anything but pedaling for ten hours. She shouldered her bag and continued walking.
It was dark by the time she got to her tenement building, a towering, terraced honeycomb of concrete. She didn’t bother with the lift. It was usually out of order anyway. Instead, she slowly climbed the winding stairwell to the tenth floor feeling the inert weight of her precious bundle in each step.
“I’m home,” she trilled softly as she closed the door to her tiny darkened apartment. The air was cooler here, fresher, smelling faintly of lemon and roses. Her sanctuary.
She checked the apartment’s battery supply. Less than 15% capacity, but she dared to turn on the full spectrum fluorescents. Just for a little while. They would need it.
As the lights flickered on, the room blossomed into a lush riot of verdant foliage. Ivy clung to the walls and spilled out the open window. Vibrant flowers, spiky dracaenas, broad leafed rubber plants, variegated hostas and herbs all vied for light; a veritable oasis of life.
She dropped her pack, withdrew the heavy bag of fertilizer and soil amender and began tending her tiny, luscious garden. Here, within her cocoon of life, she found a wealth greater than anything electricity could buy. She found peace. She found hope.
by submission | Dec 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Tom Coupland
Rob grinds his cigarette on the outside of the window, letting it drop down to the pavement. He knew it’d annoy Dave, but recently he was beginning to care less and less about what Dave thought anyway. Closing the curtains against the sun’s light and tossing back the last of his whisky he lies down on the bed, falling asleep immediately. Two hours later, with a low groan, Dave opens them.
“Honestly the least he could do is wash his ruddy mouth” mumbles Dave scratching about in the wardrobe for some clothes fresh enough to wear, after he’d taken a hot shower and used quite a bit of mouthwash of course. Fifteen minutes of attempting to look less dishevelled later he descends the stairs of the shared house. The house which he’d had to do all the looking for of course. He enters the large kitchen, from which the smell of frying bacon had been making his stomach growl since he’d awoken.
“Afternoon…” he looks over his shoulder at the timetable. This had a column of small portraits, followed by a pair of names for each of the days in the week, except for Sunday of course. “…Mary” finishes Dave spotting the fryer’s picture and traversing to Wednesday afternoon. Following a brief glance over her shoulder, “Afternoon Dave. You heard the news yet?” jerking a thumb at kitchen television perched a top the fridge. “They caught a bunch of solos hiding out in Scotland”, the small screen shows an image of a long line of bedraggled people being marched out of a small compound, under the eyes of police officers wearing full riot gear. The shot zooms out and the face of a reporter comes in to view.
“This latest group were discovered by high flying drones on a routine patrol of the highlands” she begins, speaking into camera, struggling slightly to keep her hair out of her face. “Although not the largest commune found, the level of sophistication was unusually high and would never have been discovered if not for, what we’re hearing, was an accidental fire in one of their greenhouses. Of course since Dual Habitation became required, as a last ditch effort to reduce our demand on the earth’s resources, the size of Solo camps have been reducing. There are still those selfish enough to consume double what is needed to support an individual. Making a mockery of the governments efforts to keep its carbon usage to a minimum while keeping the economy growing for…”. Dave stopped listening, he had to get to work and besides, he’d heard it all before.
—
Eight hours later he was back in the house, wondering what to do with the two hours of his remaining half day. Remembering the unpleasant early afternoon he’d suffered courtesy of his dual, he grabs his coat and heads to the pub, “Two can play at that game”.
