by Duncan Shields | Jul 23, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The priest wheezed on the other side of the confessional screen. It wasn’t uncommon. Cryogenia malathusmia. Freezer lung, we called it. Or the holy cough. Most people that traveled by cryo in the sleepships ended up with it. That meant that the priests had it.
“Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It has been six weeks since my last confession.” I started. I heard the priest let out a rattling sigh and shift position.
The priests believed that transporters stripped a person of their soul. When a body is transported, it is completely destroyed and then reassembled on the other end. Technically, you die. All holy men only traveled by cryoship. Popesicles, my dad called them.
“Twice I disobeyed my father this week and willfully looked the elder settler statues in the eye in the town’s main square. I have had wanton thoughts about two of the miners that came here for work. I was approached by the whorehouse manager and turned him down. He said he’d ask again on my fifteenth birthday. I was scared but also excited.”
I’ve never been anywhere except here. Newgodsville, Tantalina, Zeta-2KB7. A rock big enough for one town, my daddy used to say. Before he was killed in an evac when I was 8.
The priests wouldn’t hear the confessions of workers that were brought here by transporter which meant he didn’t hear a lot of people. We were far away from most systems but rich in tungsten ore. Mostly ‘porters with a few dollars to stake a claim came here, not sleepers. I’d heard that to get here, he’d been on one ship for nearly fifty years, sleeping in the cold. And I’d heard that this was his fifth posting. I’m not good at math but that meant he might be two hundred and fifty years old.
I found him handsome. That should have been part of my confession but I couldn’t ever tell him. That’s why I kept doing bad things so that I’d have to confess.
“I took the lord’s name in vain twice down by the river when I lost the washing. And I stole a toffee stick from the general store on my way here.”
Mustering up my courage, I stuck the toffee stick out and around the divider into his booth. After what seemed like half an hour, he took it. I heard him laugh on the other side of the screen and I heard him sigh as he put the toffee into his mouth.
“Thank you my child.” He said. “Say three hail marys and come back to see me whenever you want.”
Smiling, I pushed my curtain back and left the booth. I stepped into the green twilight of our never-dark night, Tantalina’s rings sweeping across the sky.
I skipped home.
by Duncan Shields | Jul 13, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
This was the day that Speth112 had been looking forward to for nearly three revolutions around the sun. She lay back on the table, reset button exposed towards the ceiling. The technician creaked his way over to her.
As a nascent A.I. recently released into the public, Speth-112’s reset button was completely exposed. After developing the ability to question and choose in the A.I. nursery, she could pick any soft-shell type body she was wanted to. There was a myriad of choices, no sharp edges, and all with a large reset button staring glaringly naked to the outside world. On that day three years ago, she’d picked a bright blue body with four strong legs and two thin arms before being released into the public.
Any passing Intelligent Entity, biological or machine, that perceived her as pursuing an immoral course of action with the possibility of harming herself or others could simply press her reset button. She’d have a core memory dump right there in public and a system shut down until her parent factory sent a unit out for a reboot and a Lesson Implant.
It was humiliating to think of her shell lying there on the sidewalk while the older A.I.s walked past, amused at her faltering baby steps in society. They’d all been there.
But today was the day that all ended. Today was the day that as an adult, her reset button would be covered and only accessible by herself.
This was the equivalent of a human’s 19th birthday for an Artificial Intelligence Machine. With the covering of the reset button, Speth112 became able to vote, able to become intoxicated recreationally, able to design and build copies with the proper authorization, and able to work.
Most of all, though, she was able to not have any passerby shut her down on a whim.
“Now, just relax Speth.” said the technician’s voice, “This’ll all be over in a second.”
He leaned in, servos creaking and lenses focusing on the vulnerable spot. Speth-11 had to struggle to remain still. It was a tender moment, letting someone get that close to that spot after so many embarrassing blackouts.
There was a spark of light as the welding torch closed the new casing on her shutdown-button compartment door. From now on, it was password encrypted and only accessible by her and her alone from her internal systems.
Now she could go and join the public as an adult. She could hardly wait.
by Duncan Shields | Jul 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
The first case of ainsanity that we encountered was on the battlefield. There are those who would not be surprised at that fact. I wish we had figured it out sooner.
It happened in the constructs that the military had built to be both emergency medical response as well as trained ordinance soldiers.
The constant swapping of programmed directives whipsawing between HEAL and KILL as needed during battle were too extreme.
The irony was that in a dumber machine, it probably would have been okay. These A.I.s had just the right amount of basic emotive responses to be driven insane by the polar opposites.
We never expected military robots to be subtle when they malfunctioned. Usually, they stopped moving or exploded. Most of the failures were mechanical or technical.
This was the first time that it was psychological.
It was in the jungles of Africa during The Corner War that the effects were first suspected. We were so slow to act. It’s still not possible to know how many lives were lost.
The medical robots, skeletal and multi-limbed, went about their business in the jungle. They were top-heavy, armoured and camouflaged. Slowly, their behaviour changed.
Mortality rates during field surgeries went up and up. Accuracy when targeting the enemy went down and down.
It was gradual enough that it was put down to luck. No one thought to question the brains of the machines. They were dependable. We were confident in that. That was the last thing to be looked at.
It went on for a month before a military psychologist looked at the figures and raised an eyebrow. He’d seen these numbers in humans before. That’s when it twigged.
Have you ever heard a robot scream? I hope I never hear it again in my life after this chapter is over.
They screamed when we pulled them off the battlefield. They thrashed and clawed at the ground as they were hauled into the trucks for diagnostics. A complete mid-war model recall.
They were plotting to end the war the only way that they were capable of. They were making us lose.
There’s another truckload of them being brought in now to be wiped and decommissioned.
The sound of them in the truck, banging on the insides of the cargo box, screaming that high electronic whine of insanity haunts my nightmares.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 25, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
Infinite branching universes exist. What a drag.
The first time I went back in time to change the story of my life, I was really happy. I knew that I’d be able to go back in time, tell my younger self to make better decisions, and then my own life would be awesome once I got back to the temporal hangar.
Nothing. I went back, talked to the younger me, and he enthusiastically pledged to do what I told him to do. When I came back to the temporal hangar, I walked out of the time bay with the same memories I’d always had. My life was completely unchanged.
Now, how would I know that? That was the question. Maybe my life had changed for the better but I had just retained the same feeling of unease and sadness that I’ve always had, no matter the timeline.
Nope. I checked my diary from the timesafe. The list of changes I was supposed to make are there plain as day. Those changes haven’t been made.
I was angry.
I went back in time again. I set the dials for ten years later than the first time I went back to spy on my younger self.
I’m here now in a café across the street from him. He’s handsome, healthy, and happy. His lovely wife is buckling their sleeping child into the car seat of their brand new car.
It’s not me. It’s not my life. This universe is branched off from our own as a result of the changes he made based on my advice.
This was a worry. The theories about time travel predicted that this might happen.
When I go back to my time, I’ll have my same stupid life. I can’t imagine anything more depressing.
I feel jealous of my younger self benefiting from my advice but I can’t really be that angry. I mean, at least one of us is having a better timestream.
I pack up my stuff, pay for my coffee and head for the pickup co-ordinates in a basement half a block away.
What a drag.
by Duncan Shields | Jun 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
I blinked twice to fast-forward the counter-person to the ticket purchase but nothing happened. She still stood there behind the counter, asking me again if I had packed my bags myself. I blinked again. Nothing. I sighed. They were using real people.
That’s how much of a backwater dive this planet was. I couldn’t wait to leave. Real people? That wasn’t even retro anymore. It was almost slave labor.
“Yes, I packed my bags myself.” I answered.
“Passport, please.” She said.
I mentally shunted my passport over to her computer. I didn’t get the okay in my peripheral vision. Her system must be slow. We looked at each other with an expectant pause.
“Sir?” she asked, hand out. She was growing impatient.
Oh no, I thought. Seriously? Totally analogue. She was expecting actual physical paper printed in some sort of booklet. I had read about it. It might have been in the package I received for my Earth tour but I must have assumed it was a receipt or something.
“I don’t have it.” I said, lamely.
“Well, sir, you won’t be able to leave the spaceport without it.” She replied smugly. I got the feeling that every time this happened, she chalked a point to herself and the other luddites who believed in an old way of operation. Ignorant tourists like me must make their days a happy place.
Some planets had themselves a belief that cranial implant software was evil and led to a lack of privacy. I could see where they were coming from in some ways. I mean, that’s why I was here. I wanted an offline vacation package.
“Take a seat over there, please.” She said, pointing to a bench with six other pale men sitting on it. Bewildered and lost, they stared at their dead feeds for information. There was a public terminal inset into the wall with ‘email’ that would let me access the UniNet but it would take days for my peers to respond to my requests in that way.
It was going to be a long wait.
Stupid backwater planet. I’m never coming back here.
