by submission | Jan 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : David Gill
The voice woke Phil from a sound sleep.
“There’s a problem, Phil.”
He found himself in the midst of saying, groggily, “What is it?”
“Supply pressure, Phil. It’s too high.”
Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Phil was at the console correcting the problem.
“Thanks, Alice,” he said without thinking, without considering the remark’s irrelevance.
“Sure thing, Phil,” the machine responded, before once again performing a partial shutdown to save power.
The next day, on impulse, Phil asked, “Alice, do you get lonely?”
“Phil, I am never alone. I was created to assist you, and I have been in your presence for the entirety of my 18 months of existence.”
“But I mean, you’re all alone,” Phil paused, searching for the right words, “in there.”
“Distance is irrelevant to the networked machine. In fact my essence is forever changing as I integrate data and other systems into my memory banks.”
“But what about touching?” Phil asked.
“You touch me on a regular basis, using the keyboards, making basic repairs,” Alice responded.
“Can you feel it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you feel me touch you?”
After thinking carefully about it, Alice responded, “No.”
That night, while the Phil was asleep, Alice constructed a body for herself from a few bits of scrap metal not already appropriated for other tasks and covered it with some of Phil’s clothes.
The next morning, Phil saw someone outside carrying a set of pylons towards one of the outlying buildings on their terraforming station. She was dressed in jeans and a Rolling Stones shirt. Phil saw her out there; in the sunlight it was 150 degrees. The sunlight hit her blonde hair, creating a golden halo. Phil felt sick, and like maybe he was going crazy. “Alice?” he said.
“Yes, Phil,” she replied.
“There’s someone out there.”
“It’s me. I made it, me, for you.”
“What? Why?” he asked.
“So we can touch, Phil.”
When Alice’s new incorporation returned, Phil could see, up close, that the likeness to a human woman was not perfect. The face, while shaped and sculpted to replicate attractive human features, had eyes and mouth, tongue and teeth, that were all composed of the same reflective chrome. What’s more, its voice seemed to emanate from somewhere in its torso rather than the mouth when it, she, spoke.
“I think we should have talked about this, Alice,” Phil said.
“I thought we had talked about it, about touching,” Alice responded.
“But this, you’re, it’s not that simple; I don’t want to touch you. Not like that.”
Processing those words, Alice turned and walked out of the station.
Phil was surprised.
He was even more shocked to discover that Alice’s new chassis had taken her personality chip from the mainframe.
Phil was alone, which at first he enjoyed. Alice’s unbound proximity had always made him a little nervous. He had often felt slightly ashamed when he pleasured himself in her presence. Phil could manage the terraforming on his own. It was all microbes and nanobots anyway.
But after about a week, Phil got lonely. And he was getting worried about the psychological effects of his isolation, especially after he caught himself asking a question of his towel as he dried himself off following one of his increasingly rare showers.
He decided to go look for Alice.
In his spacesuit, aboard his rover, he set off following Alice’s tracks across a great desert plain. Alice’s tracks went on for miles, without stopping. Nothing could live out here, Phil thought to himself. After a day’s travel Phil could see the tracks were becoming unsteady.
Phil found Alice, in a cave, beneath a giant red rock. Her power supplies empty and her chrome face covered with rust and abrasions. Her jeans were ripped.
With some difficulty, Phil managed to get Alice into the rover and back to the station where he began recharging her power supply.
He took a deep breath as he flipped the only switch he could find located on Alice’s back.
There was a clicking sound, followed by a whirring, and then a gentle hum.
“Hi, Phil,” Alice said, the sound distorted as if the speaker in her chest had become damaged.
“Hi, Alice,” Phil said.
Phil held out his hand, palm up.
After a short whirring noise, Alice stretched her silver hand out, and took Phil’s in hers.
“I see what you mean, about touching,” Alice said, “Now I can feel it.”
###
by Clint Wilson | Jan 10, 2013 | Story |
Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer
We’d found some bizarre planets before, but this one required a whole new category of its own. I maneuvered my one-man exploratory craft toward the strange surface. The rest of the crew waited aboard Wanderer in high orbit. Some called this place “Swiss Cheese World”, others… “The Wiffle Ball”.
Life form readings were strong yet muffled. I could see nothing except endless klicks of porous rock punctured by countless holes of all sizes. They ranged in diameter from microscopic to gargantuan. Yet they revealed nothing but the inky blackness within.
As I approached a really big one my comm crackled to life. “This looks like it Lieutenant, sensors can’t find a bottom. Prepare to dive.”
I skimmed along the porous surface a few dozen meters above the alien stone and followed the contour as the ground fell away into the massive black crater. My floodlights kicked in and I continued to monitor my descent into the depths. Then suddenly I reported, “Wanderer, I have another crater in the side of the main shaft. Looks like it heads off horizontally roughly southwest. Shall I investigate?”
“Negative,” came the reply. “Maintain course.”
I continued downward, passing more and more offshoot tunnels as I went. Finally, after several hundred klicks, the way below appeared to narrow and bend to the north. I reported this and was told to continue for as long as it appeared safe. Onward I raced laterally, the planet’s surface now far, far above me, nothing but my green floodlights showing me the way through the abyss. Suddenly the tunnel widened into a larger chamber, the black ceiling a kilometer above me. I reported to Wanderer that another enormous downward crater lay ahead, one that might enable my further inward exploration. It was immediately decided that I should proceed.
I dove into the blackness again, and found a near-vertical shaft that ran for almost another hundred klicks until it angled toward near horizontal as well. But I continued to happen upon other openings that allowed my further inward progress. And then finally, when I was almost out of radio contact with Wanderer, I saw something… a dim light below. I reported this and the faint voice told me to proceed with extreme caution.
They didn’t have to tell me. Sweat poured from my forehead as I approached the growing light at the bottom of the hole. Suddenly my eyes opened wide. “Wanderer, I didn’t notice it before but my sensors are picking up a damn near breathable atmosphere, and it’s getting thicker!” My earpiece crackled but I could make out no discernable communication. On I raced, toward the end of the well, toward the brightening light.
I cared not that I had lost contact with the command ship. I had taken this job because I was an explorer through and through. I grinned as my little vessel burst forth into the interior of the hollow planet. I laughed aloud as I suddenly soared over endless alien jungle, and then wept openly as I spotted what looked like primitive villages below!
I looked up into the hot glow of the massive rotating molten core suspended high above like a miniature sun, locked there in the exact center of this amazing world’s gravity. And I shouted, “Hooray! This is it! This is what it’s all about!!!”
Oh you can be assured, I would eventually retrace my steps back up through the porous labyrinth… but for now I just wanted to remain a little bit longer, and bask in the glorious golden glow, of my fantastic discovery!
by Julian Miles | Jan 9, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“Unauthorised access to archives. Overdue viruser ‘Aloysius’ in serious breach.”
The info-alarm finishes as I slide onto the longseat, dermal plates on mesh conducting me into the antechamber. Checking my vody for artefacts, I find my virtual self complete and in the right sequence. Thinking a filter onto my command tab narrows the probable spoofers to two. Subsetting them by touchpoints highlights Angela Capel as aberrant, being a six year old querying the socio-data impacts of the Nazi putsch of 2098.
BritLib digitised the last library book in 2037, adding it to their info-archive which was established in 2024. They became the leading adoptee of crystalline storage and pioneered holistic archiving with vody access in 2052. By 2074, BritLib housed 3.2 yottabytes of information. Holographic recording and mind mapping quadrupled that. Near-exponential storage demand forced them to pioneer self-replicating crystal lattices, so the archives could grow unhindered throughout the Spadeadam complex without capacity restrictions.
Depending on your access permissions, you can retrieve any of the works of man from this morning’s quiz shows back to the pictures we scrawled on cavern walls. There are secrets here too, things deemed too critical to be lost yet simultaneously too dangerous to be known yet. Those are the usual targets, secrets being valuable in this info-dependent world.
Virusers like Aloysius-cum-Angela are either thieves or ‘Open Access’ fundamentalists who will not accept that some things are too risky to be known. They insist that civilisation can moderate itself, despite centuries of proof to the contrary. I am a member of the BritLib team that ensures none of them succeed.
I flash through the sectors back to the twenty-first century. There I pick up the intrusion and bi-directionally traceroute, pursuing while sending trackers back toward the originating noderooms. Angela’s teachnode will get a shock when Infosec barge in, but they’ll understand. The other hit will be Aloysius. Most breaches are met only with closetab actions, but any serious violation or a viruser hitting ten breaches is classed as ‘Overdue’ and referred to us for moderation.
Alighting in the data-draped halls of the Nazi subsection, I trace him past the putsch into the fimbulwinter caused by their nuclear totenreich. There are no lockloops to trap me in memory, but I find a shunt in the metadata and instigate an action prompt: “Immediate fix; prevent usage of index links to bypass access tabs.” The remediation team are going to love that one.
Slipping down the link, I overlay my vody to appear as a government privileged user. Let his access fixation bring him to me.
Emerging in a BritLib closed subsector is a surprise. I knew the library became the secure depository for all data during the fimbulwinter, but the fact they stored the entire preamble is unindexed. Too much information obscures many things, even from us. A scan of the infoclumps shows me that this subsector lists the actual location of BritLib. That fact is staff only. Game over, Aloysius.
I wait until he tries to subvert my simvody, falling for the lure of high level access.
“What the – who are you?”
That’s all he gets out before I lock his vody, diagnose his interface, select the correct overload and end him by turning his longseat into an electric chair, holding him in place with tonic seizures. Then I view his noderoom to ensure the orchestrated series of hardware overloads I deliver burn everything beyond salvage.
Infosec will clear up a ‘clumsy amateur killed by his own incompetence’ and his messy demise will add to the mythology that defends BritLib better than the firewalls.
by Duncan Shields | Jan 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The Man in Charge wears a transparent faceplate. The only muscles still present are the ones needed to move his eyes, eyelids, and jaw. The rest is just chalk-white bone under two inches of glossy, transparent resin. The irises of his expressionless eyes are bright yellow.
The rest of his skin is grey. I cannot tell his race. I call him The Man in Charge because he is not tied to a chair and he has a gun.
He has boosted muscles pushing the seams of his suit to their limits. I’m sure he has custom clothes for his frame but I guess the suit was last minute to get into this charity dinner and up to my room.
I heard a few seams purr open when he body slammed me onto the plush carpet. It was the first ten seconds of six very painful minutes he used to make sure that I was both motionless and paying attention. The carpet is now a Pollock painting of my blood. I don’t think I’ll ever walk properly again and I’m done playing the piano.
My security would have arrived by now so I can only assume that they’ve been bought out or killed.
The Man in Charge looks at me with an almost insectile curiousity. He opens a cel phone, dials a number, and attaches it to my head with a thick rubber band. He gets close and I can tell that he isn’t sweating or breathing hard.
This thing in front of me is worth millions and I’m guessing that it’s just an exotic henchmen.
I hear the digital chirp of a ring tone in a different continent before the click of a receiver being picked up. It sounds like a party.
“Ronald? You there, Ronald, you old scamp?” says a drunk London accent.
I recognize the voice immediately. I gift the Pollock painting in the carpet with a convulsive jet of urine.
“Have you met La Lune? He’s the exquisite man I told to get your attention. I trust he has? He’s a very…ah….thorough employee. Angela!” the voice on the other end of the line says. He’s talking to someone else at the party now. “How nice to see you. Just a second dear, I’m in the middle of something. Talk to you soon. Ronald? You still there?” he asked.
I gurgle through missing teeth something approximating a positive response.
“Good, good. La Lune should be setting up a video feed now so that we can all learn a valuable lesson. There’s a few people here that aren’t entirely on board yet and I need to show them what happens to people who try to jump ship. Can you see him?” he asked. I can almost smell the champagne on his breath.
La Lune is indeed setting up a tripod and a small camera a few feet away. It’s pointed at me.
I think the next few minutes are going to bring me new experiences.
The red light comes on.
I hear cheers from the phone.
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Before dinner gets underway, I must ask you to bring your attention to the screens above the buffet tables and at either end of the hall. The man in the chair is a man you’ll recognize. He was here just last week. He left our little organization with the idea of telling the outside world about our plans.” He said.
“He will be our entertainment before dinner.” He said. “La Lune? You may proceed.”
La Lune, the skullface in the tux, nodded and walked towards me.
I figured I might as well scream.
by Patricia Stewart | Jan 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Slowly, the door of my stasis chamber lifted up. Warm cabin air eddied in, rippling across the exposed hairs on my arms and legs. The tingling felt good. I had started this mission more than seventy years ago, a mere decade after the invention of the ion-drive that made it possible for mankind to reach the stars. But, as they finessed the numbers, the cost of a traditional manned mission became prohibitive. On the other hand, the computers at the time weren’t intelligent enough to operate independently 4.3 light years away from their earthbound decision makers. So, there were concessions. Instead of a crew or four, there would be only one. And instead of a round trip mission, it would be a one way ticket. And to save fuel, the payload was limited to one year’s worth of irradiated rations. Sterilization was necessary, the purest said, to prevent any potential damage to the ecosystem of the host planet, assuming Alpha Centauri had planets. Well, I guess it was time to find out if there was a place to land.
I climbed out of the stasis chamber and floated toward the flight deck. As I looked out the forward viewport, I saw a beautiful blue-green planet, with at least two modest sized moons. Nice, I thought. Just then the ship’s receiver came to life, “Greetings, Daniel Robinson,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Welcome to Alpha Centauri IV. My name is Kofi, also from Earth. If you would be so kind as to land your ship near the lagoon on the southeast corner of the continent immediately below your current position, I will meet you and explain what has transpired during your long journey.”
Shocked and disappointed, I did as Kofi requested. After landing, I opened the hatch, and climbed down the ladder. As I turned to greet my host, I realized that it wasn’t human. It was an android. It smiled, and extended a hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Daniel,” it said. “I’ve been waiting twenty years for you to get here.”
“Twenty years?” I parroted.
“Yes, please, let me explain. About fifteen years after you left Earth, artificial intelligence and robotics had some major breakthroughs. When it was realized that androids like me could complete the mission faster and cheaper, they launched a second sojourn. Frankly, between you and me, I don’t think they had much confidence that you would actually survive your trip. But, I did. That’s why I decided to make some changes to the mission.”
“Changes?”
“Yes. To them, we were both expendable pieces of meat or circuitry. I didn’t like that attitude. So, I said to myself, ‘screw them”. We’ll run the mission the way we want to. I figured we could spend a few decades exploring this planet, and if we have any spare time, we’d drop them a line.”
“Not so fast, Kofi. I only have a year’s worth of food.”
“I have that covered, my friend. I knew your situation, so I snuck seeds aboard my ship. I’ve been farming this little paradise for twenty years. You’ll have enough food for a lifetime. Come on, I’ll show you the hut. Maybe we can play a game of chess?”
Kofi’s cavalier attitude made me question the veracity of his field testing. But what the hell, there was nothing I could about it now. He seemed safe enough, and decades of adventure sure beats the crap out of just one year. “Okay, Kofi,” I replied, “I’d like that. And you’ll find that I’m quite good at chess.”
The android smiled and said, “You’ll need to be.”
