by Julian Miles | Oct 26, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
When you were Josie and I was Serena, not J0513 and 53R3N4: silly affectations to make us ‘more robotic’.
Back then you had hazel eyes and brownish-red hair. Now you’ve got blue optics and dreadlocks made from braided string. I’m still jealous of that find. All I have is a spiky mat of cable offcuts. Either way, routine scanning will consider us non-bald and thus, non-robotic. It’s an accepted rule based on a crazy assumption, but to our advantage.
We were among the first to be sentenced to ‘indefinite exile’, and certainly the first to survive the transfer procedure. When I woke on ISS-5, you were there waiting for me, steel skull reflecting the lights of the cupboard that was our home during off-duty hours.
Human brains in robotic forms: technological marvels. Those who managed us didn’t care. To them, we were new appliances. With no media to appease – they had no access to orbital stations back then – our handlers didn’t have to pretend. We got the least pleasant jobs, frequently at the edge of our tolerances. It took me a long time to realise they weren’t always being cruel: they were doing as instructed to gauge the capabilities of our bodies.
Repairs cost too much, so unless something broke, we had to live with the ‘minor’ problems. Our bodies had been designed for low-maintenance resilience. It took a lot to break us. That didn’t mean joint misalignments and out-of-sync control nets were trivial. It meant constant headaches and a loss of flexibility or precision. Through necessity, we became experts at patching ourselves up.
By the time we started work on ISS-12, we were largely left to our own devices, treated as another work crew, apart from having to be escorted from the airlock to the room we’d finally been allowed. We were sure there were other exiles, but none made themselves known.
The technology available to repair us had become astounding. With our media ban still being enforced, our leisure became learning all the technology we could using service manuals copied via unattended works terminals.
ISS-15 gave us our chance. A genuine disaster allowed us to disappear amongst the scattering debris, our locator units removed with long-practiced speed and hurled toward the expanding sphere of destruction behind us.
We slipped aboard the first cadaver ship and went back to Earth among the coffins. Once there, we extricated ourselves, put on the bodysuits it had taken us so long to make, and walked out into a world unrecognisable to us. The bodysuits faked human temperatures and other detectable cues, like heartbeat and respiration. With scruffy clothes and head coverings, we passed as real people.
Since then, we’ve been catching up. It transpires we’re the last. The number of fatalities during the transfer procedure eventually led to an outcry. Soon after we started work on ISS-8, the whole project was cancelled. Our ‘deaths’ were only noted in a few scientific publications. The consensus opinion is that we committed suicide. As our last locations showed us heading towards the conflagration that consumed ISS-15, they believe we seized the opportunity to end our miserable existences.
“Serena.”
I blink myself out of reverie and nod to Josie.
Robots hardened for outer space are tough. We could smash through the walls, but that would be unusual. Incidents like that attract the attention of living, breathing law officials, who might become curious. However, a rammed-through door is common enough.
They’ll also be sure the antique wigs made of human hair went to rich collectors, and that assumption suits us just fine as well.
by Julian Miles | Oct 19, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I raise my hand above my head, knuckles to the rear, palm to the sky, fingers softly curled, thumb tight. As the weight tips the arm leftward, I let it drop and curve away to the right, knuckles uppermost until that extension stops like there’s a wall at my back. The wrist rotates to place thumb uppermost, forming a straight line that runs from mind to arm to blade.
The entity tumbles past, thoughtlessly falling, its attention taken by the purple flood that spills from the gashes cut just above both knees.
My fist turns, my arm curls inward until the heel of my palm touches my brow. The fist tilts and I whip the blade over and down, flinging ichor from it before reversing grip and coming to a standstill. The blade parallels the back of my arm, tip level with my ear.
“You did not kill dyn?”
I flick a glance in the direction of the voice. She hasn’t moved. My duster shifts in the wind that crosses this alien steppe.
“It would have been a waste.”
“Dyn would have killed you.”
“That much was obvious. It is why I struck instead of conceding.”
“You are not like your companions.”
“Inasmuch that I am not dead, or in some other detail?”
Spinning hard left, I stop by kicking my right foot into the dirt. My right arm swings like throwing a hook punch with knuckles up. I twist, lean, and extend. My wrist flexes and the reversed blade flicks out to carve a gory track through the dorsal crest of dyn who had scuttled in from behind.
Returning to an upright stance, I switch grip, flick more ichor across the grasses, reverse grip once again, and bring the blade back to rest behind my shoulder.
“I was leading into a witticism as you toppled, riven to the quick by that dyn. You have lifemarked two of my finest. I may have to reconsider the claims of my dynar as to their excellence.”
There are unhappy growls from the multitude that ring this impromptu challenge circle.
“Lifemarked?”
“Your strikes will leave marks upon their healed forms. Until those marks fade, those dyn live and move to your will. That is our way.”
“And if the marks do not fade?”
“Then they serve for life. Thusly we call it ‘lifemarking’.”
“If I die?”
“It is dishonourable for them to kill the lifemarker. Moreso, should you die before them, they will also be killed.”
“Simple and effective.”
Another dyn is sneaking in. Snapping my left hand out, I extend a finger. In a silence of bated breaths, I wag the finger from side to side. The dyn rises from the long grass and slinks back into the crowd.
“You chose not to lifemark a third?”
“Eventually, some dyn will get lucky. I would prefer that to happen whilst in service, rather than as a ronin upon a foreign plain.”
I turn to face her.
“I’m a long way from home, dynri. My ship is wrecked, my ammunition spent, and my companions are dead. All I have is some small skill with this blade and a willingness to kill for a cause. Will you give me one?”
“Killing tools like yours are called ‘shongi’. But what you wield is far more. My dynar whisper that it is lightning sworn to your service.”
I’ll take that as an omen.
“We could be at your service.”
“Then welcome, dynar. What names do it and you bear?”
I grin.
“Call us Raitoningu.”
by Julian Miles | Oct 12, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“This project costs more than every other clandestine operation put together! In fact, I could equip a division with the best we have right now, and still have change to buy a squadron of F35s!”
Senator Godley starts hammering his fist on my desk for emphasis. Senator Swanwick hastily picks up his cup.
I smile at them both.
“Gentlemen, I understand that this new focus on oversight has ushered your department into a golden age of power and influence. However, I implore you, please turn your attention to the unspecified assets that caused the other 1.1 trillion hole in your budgets. What my department does is untouchable, and will never be disclosed.”
*
Senator Swanwick stands up, drains his cup, and smiles at me.
“Godley was convinced he needed to expose some egregious malfeasance on your part. I am more inclined to trust the decades-old Constitutional Writ that places your office beyond oversight or reproach. Thank you for the coffee. You have a good day.”
“I shall try to. Please convey my condolences to Theresa Godley. It would be inappropriate for me to visit at the moment, given the late Senator’s statements about me.”
“I’ll do that, Vernon. Goodbye.”
The door closes behind him and I check my watch. My schedule has cleared for the day. I can slide out and surprise Susie before her recital.
From the door of the office I look back at my desk. The same one the Director of Internal Logistics has sat at since the department was founded. I think I’m the ninth director, but it’s just as likely I’m the twentieth. That’s the thing about managing the secret Time Directorate of the United States Government. I never know what is genuine history, and what is the result of a manipulation.
All those writers and scientists missed the one obvious outcome of time travel: reality adjusts. We are sure that time as we know it is often meddled with. Causality adjusts reality for every slip-up, every carefully planned intervention, every surgical strike. Whether it does so by rewriting the world’s recall, or by spawning another reality, is unknown.
The outcome is nobody knows about any change to history, because the changed state becomes our history. I know that sometime this month I have to make a decision regarding a problem that seems intractable. I also know that if I decide on temporal intervention, the problem will cease to exist as far as everything is concerned. The operative will return with no memory of what they did, except for a certainty of success.
Which does suggest that those who attempt to intervene and fail are lost forever, but we have no record of them. Everything we do is technically a non-event, as no requirements can be recalled, and all causes and targets for the missions are no longer applicable.
That’s why we are the only department with Constitutional Writ and absolute immunity. By any recognised metric of success, we do nothing and cost a fortune.
All I have is the count on the wall outside the bunker that conceals the launch chambers. It’s incremented whenever an operator returns.
It stands at one thousand, nine hundred and forty-one. I think I might be responsible for some of the recent increments.
*
It doesn’t really matter. I do my job to the best of my ability, only using the power available to me as a last resort. That sense of duty, and the love of my family, reassures me.
Enough pondering. Theresa has a recital tonight. I don’t want to be late.
by Julian Miles | Oct 5, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Miguel Jarvis Wong had lived on three continents before the age of thirteen, and been a trouble-finder on all but the first. To this day he doesn’t know exactly what his father did for a living, only that it meant making home in more rundown areas than on military bases. His mother did her very best, but Miguel was his father’s son, clever and opinionated from an early age. That precociousness transmuted into arrogance after this father died, then drowned in guilt at the manner of his mother’s passing. Standing over her grave, he swore to do better with what he had.
Twenty years later, Professor M. Jarvis Wong straightens up from the lectern, waving his hand to send the displays from local holographic projection to the screens that dominate the arena.
“My father drilled many things into me. One of the useful ones was the concept of ‘intelligent searching’. Which, for my long-suffering students, results in my demands that they seek at least two independent sources for every fact.”
A surprising number of the younger audience nod with resigned familiarity.
“On a higher level, it made me sceptical of research after the theory. When you go looking for things that support your theory, it can lead you to ignore potential discoveries because they don’t fit with what you expect. I believe that you should take what is, then explain why and how. From that belief came the reason for my latest tranche of papers: just because we can’t detect it, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
He nods and waves his hands placatingly.
“Yes, I know I’ve been framed as the crazy scientist looking for faeries and ghosts. I’ve been accused of wasting grant monies better spent on conventional research, and have lost valued colleagues who became disenchanted with my aims.”
A bearded man stands and waves a fist toward the lectern: “You’re an egotistical lunatic who should be rejected by the scientific community!”
Miguel points at the man.
“Your work on the detection of anomalous energy effects in inanimate materials was one of the foundations of today’s presentation, Henry.”
The bearded man sits down, shaking his head.
“While I acknowledge the value of Professor Daldene’s input, his reaction is also a reason for today. The demands for something of substance from my work have reached a point, where, to be blunt, I have to ‘put up or shut up’.”
There’s scattered applause, along with shouts of “about time” and “fraud”.
Miguel gestures to the screens about the arena.
“What you see on the screens are simplified explanations of that work. Now, before we progress, I have to admit that today’s discovery came about by accident. I was looking for a way to detect the human soul. I’m still doing that, but what I had been working on was the wrong approach. What I found instead,” he pauses, “is this.”
A dozen huge lights come on, bathing the arena in an eerie off-white glow. There’s laughter that swiftly dies away. Screaming starts.
Miguel extends a hand to rest against the gigantic, scaled head that rests next to him on stage. A stage that many had said was ‘barely big enough for his ego’ is now filled with something that looks a lot like a very large dragon.
“This is Kresdall. He is the First Envoy to Humanity from the Nineteen Realms. Other races of which I gather, from the loud reactions, have been spotted amongst you in the audience.”
He nods to Henry.
“Let us see who and what is rejected, shall we?”
by Julian Miles | Sep 28, 2020 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
> >
At least with the second Faraday cage built as an ‘airlock’ around the entrance to the living module, burst transmissions from anything inside won’t do them any good. ‘Them’ – so imprecise. Winning wars depends on information. Having nothing reliable about my opponents always, I hate to admit, brings me down.
> >
Oh, I hear you, Fighter666. But if I attribute to them the worst that could possibly be, I’d not be up against h-
Hierarchies like this.
> >
No, WhiteManzRule, any type of targeted genocide is not the answer. It might be satisfying for you, but it’s never a solution.
> >
CharlieTexan, you crack me up. I’m PrepOne. I’m alone. Not even a pet. My trust in that sides with Fighter666 and Tsunetomo: if it’s all or nothing, then it has to be nothing.
> >
Tsunetomo, WhiteManzRule? He wrote the Hagakure. Last of his kind; I sympathised with him.
> >
No, Chalky37219, strategy from foreign places isn’t useless. You have to understand that man has been fighting amongst himselves, on every level, for a very long time. I guarantee some observer has already understood and noted the principles. Today’s technology makes things interesting, but the fundamentals are unchanging.
> >
Steady, Fighter666. I don’t mean you should betray your brothers. I mean that anyone trying to uphold the ‘noble savage’ ideal is an idiot who will die quickly. Someone will take advantage and blindside the poor fool. It always happens.
> >
Chalky37219, I guess you’re new to this.
> >
Easy there. What I mean is you’ve got some of the right ideas. After all, you found your way here. But you’ve still got a head full of mainstream garbage. Remember, no matter what the situation, the Road Warrior is an archetype, not a lifestyle. Live as alone as possible, trust very few, make the best of every situation, and always fight to kill. That saving the weak or riding about in a hopped-up coupe is strictly for television. If you’re going to be long-term, you’ve got to figure out that any type of chariot is too noisy. Plus, they need maintenance and space. If you must get wheels under you, get a decent bicycle or tricycle and learn how to fix it. Means you only have to worry about fuelling yourself.
> >
CharlieTexan, I’m safe enough. Watching the goings-on in the world with interest over secured feeds, and working on ending my weakness for spicy burgers with a side of greasy fries.
> >
No, Fighter666, I don’t think it’s going to happen soon. It’s just another facet of preparing. When it happens, I don’t want to be distracted again by silly cravings while trying to act decisively.
> >
When, Chalky37219? Well, there needs to be more decay. You know, further breakdown of urban infrastructure along with government indifference to it, then shortfalls in services that rely on someone apart from the individual paying for them. Followed by shortages of staple diet items for those without access to wealth. Around all that will be creeping fascism with Victorian British values, encouraged with tenuous but media-backed justification. That’ll be the main indicator. Soon after, someone will get desperate enough to do something drastic, and that’ll light the fuse. But remember, it’s NEVER going to be one of the conspiracies. It’ll be a perfect storm, and it will wash this world clean like has happened and been forgotten so many times before.
> >
What, Fighter666? Just me getting tired and wordy in the early hours. Doesn’t mean anything. Okay, people. I’ll be back discussing the latest good fight tomorrow. Valē.
> >
