by Julian Miles | Jun 11, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Sweating people are moving quickly down the High Street, frantically making angular edifices with cardboard boxes and spray paint. I’m working with Heather, rigging cat’s cradles of fishing line between the trees and bushes in the little park off Wendlesham Close. Jethro’s zig-zagging down Keynsham Road, spraying glow-in-the-dark crazy string under the cars and occasionally right across the road.
“Johnny Reed! What’re you doing?”
The towheaded kid stops, arms full of looted chocolate.
“If you go around and give that out, I won’t tell your dad.”
He nods and runs off.
Over on Queen’s Way Estate, they’re charging back and forth across the paths with fence panels and nail guns, changing the layout of back alleys. Up in Victory Gardens, they’re painting out the charge points and putting plastiboard over door and window recesses, which Malcolm’s team are then matching to the walls using plaster sprayers.
Ninety minutes. That’s all we have. Then the sky will fill with drones and the robots will clatter in. I don’t understand why they bother padding the feet: a pack of robots gently collide with each other all the time. Walking quietly is irrelevant.
The drones won’t be a problem. We’ve wires everywhere above the second floor and motion-triggered air mortars shooting weighted plastic netting.
Warfare changed with global access technologies. Troops can prepare for attacks in virtual environments built from real-time data that might only be days old. When they come, they already know the ground.
Naturally, after that level of accurate mapping, you don’t have to use humans. Robots can do the early dirty work, especially in urban warfare.
“They’ve sighted the carriers! Eighteen minutes!” Janine runs past, the training behind her athletics medals coming in handy.
That’s our communications trick: electronics being just about useless – either jammed or eavesdropped. So, we work with runners or junkshop walkie-talkies while we change the way the streets appear.
The synthetic resin in some ornaments appears – to simple scans – just like explosive blocks. Granny’s holiday souvenir from Scotland slung under a car with a handful of loose wires, outline broken by luminous plastic string, which also screws up imaging, is a treat for stalling an advance.
Which is our endgame. We can’t win. Civilians versus modern military? Suicide. However, we can confuse and frustrate their autonomous war machines. Streets the AI ‘knows’ look radically different when you obscure distinguishing features. In extremis, we can simply spray a whole street white or black. Computer imaging is a complex thing that requires substantially more processing power than you’d believe. Fast processors made it viable, to a point. Take it beyond that point and it’s going to be working out why the location doesn’t look like the image it has in memory when the streetlights come on, or the sun goes down, or something else happens to change the ambient lighting, which means the checking has to restart – if it hasn’t already crashed out and left the robot sitting there. Add a few well-placed mirrors to baffle spotlights or flares and an area can become impassable without human assistance.
Time. It’s our friend. The longer it takes them to clear an area, the more likely they are to be caught mid-op by a counterstrike. When our side hit back, we hit hard.
This ‘police action’ is costing them millions. The actual casualties may be few, but the losses being sustained by their backers? Huge. They’re haemorrhaging money.
Which means this war should get called off soon.
by Julian Miles | Jun 4, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s another muted ‘thud’. Bangstri leans its eyeball on the cool bulkhead.
“How many is that?”
“Seventeen, Venerated Piloting Specialist.”
It rotates it’s necktacle to glare.
“My appellative is Bangstri. You are to use it at all times, not just when you haven’t made a wormhole-sized bartniff of something whilst trying to overachieve. It has reached a point where I don’t actually need reportage from you. All I have to hear is how you address me to determine the success or failure of the particular in question.”
“Apologies, Venerated Piloting Specialist Bangstri. It was not my intent to commit a bartniff of such scale.”
It leans back against the bulkhead. The chill metal stalls rage-induced temperature creep.
“You were aiming for a smaller one, mayhap?”
Sputtering and multiple colour changes accompany limb waving and genuflecting.
“No being intends to bartniff, Dangdo. You simply did not think all the way through your cunning contrivance.”
A trio of eye stalks pop upright: “You thought it was cunning, Venerated Piloting Specialist Bangstri?”
“Not particularly. Merely testing to see where your self-preservation boundary lies.”
“I do not understand?”
“That much, I have gleaned.”
There’s another thud.
“Eighteen.”
“Apologies, Venerate-”
It extends a striketacle so fast it pins Dangdo to the wall.
“I am no longer in the mood for apologies. Indeed, I am reconsidering whether an educand is desirable upon this vessel. I would venture that you delivering a scintillating remediation theory within the next few minims might improve your chances of not being my morsel for this wake cycle.”
More sputtering and multiple colour changes accompany limb waving. The attempts to genuflect whilst pinned firmly to a wall are quite desperate.
“I remain bereft of remediation.”
Further sputtering. Bangstri opens the flap over his primary digestor and pops Dangdo in. The flap closes and it feels a sense of calm return. It always gets forceful when peckish. Now, to the problem at hand.
Eighteen-
‘Thud’.
Nineteen native bipeds in body-contoured clothing with matching tabards, engaged in rapid locomotion along some sort of game trail. A tribal challenge, mayhap? This activity is obviously a local ritual of some importance. The participants also possess a passable level of electronic sophistication, although only worn, not embedded or grown.
What to do?
‘Thud’.
Twenty. This getting out of appendage. Why on Flordiplah had Dangdo parked them across an obvious transitway with obscura-screens engaged? Impacting fauna are snatched into static containment until decisions as to denouement are taken. Thanks to this bartniff, the vessel is actually running out of containment capacity.
It scans local transmissions for an acceptable way to avoid having containment autopunt twenty sentients into the big empty as its vessel exits the atmosphere.
“Yet again conspiracy theorists are having a field day due to three people collapsing unexpectedly over the weekend. All of them were visiting Meech Lake, over in Gatineau Park. Conspiracy theorists maintain that Carbide Wilson left an underground laboratory that’s never been discovered. Chemicals stored in the lab are leaking and mixing, leading to noxious gas releases, an early warning that the lab will soon explode. So far, investigators haven’t found any subterranean lairs. The cause of the collapses remains under investigation.”
Serendipitous. It transits the necessary distance and artfully decants the sentients along a convenient length of transitway adjacent to the collapse locations. Being bereft of consciousness, they should be flaccid enough to suffer no lasting harm from the short drop.
Departing for home on the minim, it feels it’s temperature fall back to cool.
That’s it. No more educands. Their snack value isn’t worth the irritation.
by Julian Miles | May 21, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a dark atmosphere here on the hill, which is a sad achievement: with modern lighting and the city sparkling below, the Governor’s place is usually the brightest spot.
Until Maleshi brought the ruckus to the docks and Grunhilde took it personally. The mother of thieves versus the smuggler lord.
“Denton, you making up articles again?”
I turn and smile: “It’s my living, Governor. I’m always thinking about making articles.”
“Well, this won’t be one.” He seems dead serious.
Which means there’s a better tale to be had: “Then give me a story that makes it worth my while not to tell the galaxy about how a corrupt police chief suborned a planetary council to allow the criminal he obeyed to run our spaceports for personal gain.”
William appears too genteel to be a Governor. He should be cultivating roses or teaching history to scions of nobility.
“I know that look. You’ve told me the story behind it. I hate roses and spoilt brats. Looking like a fop is part of the repertoire. Get over it.”
I cut him a little curtsy: “We’re back to ‘tell me a better tale’.”
He huffs: “I give you a decent story and you forget your designs on me and outing Chief Retnagnir before we complete the case against him?”
“To cover both, it’ll have to be an epic.”
“Winonna Rogers.”
“Bandit queen of this sector, until she disappeared.”
“Classically trained pianist, horticulturalist, and the mother of my estranged children.”
That I did not see coming.
“Your children?”
“Son and daughter. So devoted to one another it was worrying. Of course, in their teens that devotion occasionally flared into hateful arguments. One would storm out, Winonna would intercede, there would be sullen silence for a couple of days, then they’d be amigos again.”
I suspect this not leading to a happy place.
“My son tore it all up. Being bandit-raised most of the time, I had tried to immunise him to the poisonous aspects of their culture. It didn’t take. Nineteen and full of machismo, he came down hard on his sister for being ‘unladylike’. For the first time, Winonna took a side. He stormed out. As usual, she waited a few hours, then sought him out. I guess he thought his mama had betrayed him.”
He looks at me and I can see tears in his eyes.
“The love of my life was killed by our son. Our daughter vowed revenge.”
This’ll get readers.
I’m not sure I like myself right now.
“No-one knows you have scion or had a lady. Why tell me, especially over a silly threat?”
“Those kids are beyond my reach. Maybe your article can get that far, if you add the impact their war is having on the common people.” He looks out across the city as another plume of smoke rises: “People their father has taken an oath to help yet is powerless to do so while his children quarrel using other people’s lives.”
Oh, no.
He looks back to me, tears spilling down his cheeks: “My children call themselves Maleshi Blood and Grunhilde Storm. Both are younger than thirty. I dread what they could become.” He waves his hand toward the city, where fires mark battles every day, and whispers: “Look at what they do.”
William, dear William.
“You realise one or both might turn on you?”
“Yes.”
“Why now?”
“Their deeds are getting darker. Something must change to break this cycle. So, write as well as you always do. Publish without regret.”
He smiles.
“Shine a light, Miss Denton. Show them what they cannot see.”
by Julian Miles | May 14, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“That’s it. Let the colours soothe you. So easy. Relax. It’s all here.
Anything you need to be concerned over, everything you must have. There’s nothing you need to fear because we’ll tell you if there is.
No, don’t worry. You’re not missing a thing. Just go about your work and play without a care, because we’re on your side. That’s right, we’re your safety web. If you don’t connect to any sites on the wild side, you and your children can’t be in danger.
After all, we have teams of specialists combing the wild every day to bring you the best bits from all over the world. There’s really no need to concern yourself with the complicated stuff around securing your browsing. We’ll take the risks for you. After all, we care.
There’s no need for a book or some old-fashioned text-based website. Quite honestly, if it’s more than three hundred characters, it’s not worth it. We’ll read you any good bits. If we think it’s worth your time, we’ll make a film. The really good stuff we’ll turn into a series.
All those worries about lack of privacy were unfounded, weren’t they? You carry on. It really can be the dream we were promised. Let us deal with the things that would detract from the quality of your life.
Your family is the important thing, you work to provide for them so they can be the providers of the next generation. Work. Rest. Family. There really is nothing else you need beyond caring for those three things.
Every day, your efforts contribute toward the greater good. Your expectations and continuing happiness inspire us to keep you safe from a world where the ignorant insist that knowledge is good for all and secrets are a right. Who can be expected to live in that sort of chaos? That’s right: no-one. You’re lucky. You don’t have to. We’re here. Whenever you feel a doubt –
Look into the screen.”
by Julian Miles | May 7, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
We’re glaring at each other across a gap that is – as we have repeatedly tested – exactly nine metres wider than either of our best reaches. The ground for kilometres around us is nothing but churned mud and scoured rock. Not a leaf, not a lifeform.
“Hawk Four, what is your status?”
“Central, I’ve got one extant bogey, range zero, in a Limuform Eighteen.”
“Hawk Four, why is the bogey extant if within range?”
“Central, I’m out of everything, including legs. Before you ask, I only have one arm left and it’s a manipulator, not an aggressor.”
“Hawk Four, why have you not been terminated?”
“I took it’s chargebank and tracks with a pulse from my Gadden. Its response was to blow my last combat arm – plus Gadden – off before it toppled onto the launcher it was relying on. So, after we worked out we couldn’t reach with anything, we threw things for a while.”
“Hawk Four, why did you stop throwing things?”
“If you check the manual, you’ll find ‘mud’ listed under ‘stuff that doesn’t go through alien armour’.”
“Hawk Four, stay focused.”
“Central, a Limuform Eighteen is nine times the size of the Dandrif Alpha I trotted out here in. I am very focused. You may regard the inappropriate levity as the equivalent of the steam shooting from the vents of the Limuform.”
“Hawk Four, did you say it’s shooting steam?”
“Confirmed.”
“At what frequency?”
“Central, hold… Once every fifty-five seconds, from alternating vents.”
“You’re in luck. It’s in trouble. That’s not steam, that’s pressurised, overheated coolant blowing off.”
“Central, are you telling me I’m lucky to be sharing the same decare as an eighteen-ton alien war machine with a multi-ton fusion drive about to detonate?”
“That’s a big kill, Hawk Four. Bonus pay and squad credit.”
“Squad’s dead, Central. I’ll be joining them after this nuclear whatever goes off.”
“A muon-catalysed fusion device in an overboundary condition, Hawk Four.”
“Note that for my memorial plaque, would you?”
The Limuform is waving at me.
“Central, hold.”
Across the morass, a turquoise tentacle is pointing to the Gadden. I can reach it, but I don’t have the combat interface in my manipulator to fire it. It could fire it, but thankfully can’t reach it.
Oh.
I watch the tentacle as I follow the thought: the whatever-it-is in the dying alien war machine keeps pointing to my gun, pointing to the-
What is it pointing to?
I awkwardly roll myself back. Before my Dandrif overbalances and slowly rolls forward again, I see a promontory above me.
“Central, ETA for retrieval prior to detonation?”
“None, Hawk Four. We are evacuating a ten-kilometre radius.”
“Thanks, Central. Hawk Four out.”
The hell with this. I slide the Gadden toward the tentacle. If I’m going, it might as well be now.
The tentacle wraps about the Gadden. In its grip, my energy cannon looks like a toy gun – that’s pointing at me. Charming.
After a pause, it tracks the Gadden carefully upwards, then a fraction to the left. It fires and a baby mountain falls on me.
I’m just realising I’m not crushed when the rocks on one side of me start to glow as everything shakes. Temperature alerts start flashing. My radiation monitor goes clean across the spectrum, then drops back nearly as fast.
The shaking stops and I’m still alive. I activate my rescue beacon.
I wait, pondering the decision it made.
Facing inevitable death, would I have extended the same courtesy?
I’d like to think so.
In all honesty, I hope I never have to find out.
