by Stephen R. Smith | May 16, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The professor entered the lecture hall at precisely nine o’clock, took off his blazer and draped it across the lectern.
Gradually the conversation in the room declined from a dull roar, to a persistent murmur, to near silence.
“Good morning.”
A half-hearted response rippled through the crowd.
“I’m not going to bore you with a description of the course you’re attending, I expect by your very presence here that you’re aware, and if you’re not then I’m not particularly interested in enlightening you.”
Sporadic chuckling.
“How many of you are familiar with the movie ‘The Matrix’?” As he spoke he paced slowly up and down the front of the hall.
Hands raised throughout.
“Specifically the green rainfall of data visible when Neo finally groks the Matrix itself and can see what the Agents see?”
The same show of hands.
“That would be a spectacularly useless interface for an advanced being to use in order to view the compositional and kinetic data pertaining to an environment, however…”, he paused, turning to look directly at the students, “as a commonly recognized bit of pop culture, it’s a passable metaphor for the purpose of discussion.”
“When you look around the room, you see your fellow students, desks, coffee cups, knapsacks, and so on, but when I look around the room I see a massive mesh of objects, each with defined and describable attributes and methods.”
A number of students turned to one another, and a low murmur of conversation started.
“Hair colour,” he pointed at a number of students in the front rows, “brown, blond, auburn…”, he paused again, tilting his head as he regarded one student in the front row. “Green.”
“Skin colour,” he pointed to several students sitting in the middle rows, “yellowish pink, medium tan, dark brown.”
“Eye colour,” he pointed this time to students sitting in the rows closer to the back of the room, “blue, grey, green.”
He resumed pacing, his hands moving in front of him as he spoke, making motions as though trying to contain some invisible ball of yarn.
“Blood type, bone density, each of these attributes are measurable, known and well defined. Each of you also have a large number of defined methods; stand up, sit down, chew your gum, raise your hand. Many of these properties and methods were scaffolded by the time of birth, some have been added since, and each have been fleshed out over the course of your life, continually being shaped by the properties and methods of the objects that surround and interact with you.”
He stopped again, turning to face his audience and stuffed both hands forcibly into his pants pockets.
“There is, however, something that is both a property and a method. Some believe it’s emotion, some the soul, but whatever word you use to identify it, it’s a thing that has a measurable quantity, some of you possess more emotion than others, and it’s a thing with methods that are observable only in how they affect other properties and methods. Were I to show you drowning puppies, your heart muscles would contract, you would feel pain, some of you would shed tears, many would audibly indicate your displeasure, all of which are observable symptoms of the emotion construct, but evidence of the presence of a thing is not the thing itself.”
He stopped speaking and stood silently, fixing each student with a stare until they looked away, fidgeting nervously in their seats. He waited until the room once again was completely quiet.
“Any sufficiently advanced being could recreate the known properties and methods of a person, and with the right resources pass such a thing off without anyone knowing it was fabricated, but one cannot reproduce what one cannot define.”
“Your singular focus while under my tutelage is to identify and define the emotion object, make known its properties and its methods. You may work alone or in groups, with or without my direct attention. You will, before you graduate from this class, as a requirement of graduating from this class, solve this mystery.”
His voiced lowered to the point where students at the back had to strain to hear him.
“Should you fail, not only will you be denied the right to graduate, I can promise you, I will not care.”
by Stephen R. Smith | May 3, 2016 | Fragments |
Kathy Kachelries stopped at a particularly long red light over a decade ago and pondered the lack of meaningful pastimes for these otherwise wasted moments. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was something quick to read, in the few moments between green lights, or tables at the diner, or on your coffee break at the office?
This was the seed of an idea from which, with the help of JR Blackwell, Jared Axelrod, J.Loseth and B.York, 365tomorrows was born on August 1st, 2005 with Jared’s story ‘Outer Space Romance’.
Over a decade, and more than 3,500 stories later, 365tomorrows has become more than a pastime, more than a passion. It’s a focal point for amazing views of possible futures from around the globe, some imagined by the writers of 365, and many, many more imagined by you.
We’ve been fortunate over the years to have some amazing talented writers share their ideas with us, and I – personally – am eternally grateful for the privilege of keeping the keys and moving this ark of ideas forward.
With this iteration of the site our goals were twofold; first, to make the entire site more mobile friendly and readable, and second, to integrate as seamlessly as possible with social media and encourage more conversation around the stories. We’ve shuttered the forums, and we hope that you’ll join us on the site as well as on Facebook and Twitter to share your thoughts on these flashes of the future.
2016, still on the wire, crackling with furious energy, and no intention of slowing down.
Many thanks from all of us to all of you.
Stephen R. Smith
Editor, Staff Writer, Site Administrator
by Stephen R. Smith | Apr 21, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Lewis unzipped the duffle bag on the table so the stacks of paper bills were visible.
“Space suits are expensive,” Sweet had told him, “and you not bring back.”
Sweet eyed the contents of the bag from a distance. “It’s all there? I don’t have to count?”
Lewis shook his head ‘no’, and waited.
“Come, you need suit.” Sweet beckoned with big hairy arms and disappeared through the vertical strips of once-clear plastic hanging in the doorway.
Lewis followed. The corrugated steel shed he’d arrived at seemed to be built into the side of a hill, and the plastic-covered door gave way to a long dark passage, which itself opened up onto a massive concrete cylinder that reached deep into the ground and rose above him to the darkening evening sky.
“Missile silo, abandoned, but perfect place for big space gun, no?” Sweet stood proudly on the lip of the old launch tube. “Come, we go down, then you go up, yes? Quick, we need to shoot soon to hit cluster.”
Lewis followed the beefy man around an expanded metal walkway, bolted to the inside wall of the silo, to where a makeshift elevator had been attached to the concrete wall. He braced himself as they descended into the darkness below.
At the bottom the tunnel opened up into an almost warehouse sized building. There were shipping pallets stacked with boxes, some wrapped in plastic and most covered in dust. A row of rough terrain vehicles sat against the far wall, though how they got there, or whether they could be driven out wasn’t immediately apparent. Overhead large bulbous lights flooded the space in pockets of warm yellow and overlapping shadows.
“Your suit,” Sweet pointed to an orange and white space suit on a nearby table, “leave your boots and jacket, put on suit, I help with helmet and gloves”.
It took Lewis nearly fifteen minutes to struggle into the suit while Sweet busied himself with what looked like a large model rocket nearby, twice as tall as the man himself and held upright by a pair of vice-like attachments on a forklift. On the side of the tube was painted ‘CCCP’ in large red letters, with a smily face added below in apparent freehand.
“Gloves first,” Sweet returned his attention to Lewis, attaching the gloves and engaging the twist lock mechanism at their cuffs. “Follow and listen.” He led Lewis, ambling awkwardly in the ill fitting suit to the forklift and it’s rocket payload. “You climb in here, we pressurize can then load you in launch tube.” He pointed off into the darkness, back in the direction they came. “You watch oxygen here,” he tapped a gauge on the suit’s sleeve, “I fire booster and it shoots you into orbit, then you push here, and here,” he grabbed at a pair of handles inside on either side of the door, pushing them away from each other, “and out you go, yes?”
Lewis studied the helmet in his hands. “Once I’m in orbit, your people will be waiting for me?”
“Yes, my people are waiting for you.” He grinned, and grasping Lewis by the shoulders shook him heartily. “You will have plenty of company.”
The launch vehicle was a squeeze, but Sweet explained the thickness and the tiled nose cone would deflect the heat, and the formed interior was as comfortable as was possible with this kind of delivery system.
“Not first class, but quick and nobody find you. Good, yes?”
Lewis nodded, then tried to relax as the door closed and he and the rocket were trundled across the floor and loaded into the launch tube which, Lewis realized, was probably also bolted onto the silo wall.
The launch itself was brutal, Lewis slipping in and out of consciousness several times before the crushing weight of Earth’s gravity abated and the craft settled into what had to be its final orbit.
Lewis waited. An hour? Hours? He’d lost track of time, and could barely make out the glowing needle on his oxygen, now showing nearly half empty.
He put his hands on the two handles, hesitated, and pushed.
The cabin depressurized instantly, tearing the door off into the vacuum of space.
The Earth was spread out blue below him, and scattered around him, dozens perhaps in a tight cluster were familiar looking cylinders, some still closed, some, like his with the door missing and a familiar orange and white suited figure inside.
Sweet sat in his silo below, poured himself another vodka and raised his glass.
“Moy narod”, he said, “my people”.
by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
They waited at the mouth of the service corridor, the mezzanine railing just a few meters away. Above them somewhere, the heavy thumping of the security spider marked its progress in its pursuit of them. Across an open space broken at intervals by tree trunks and greenery, the armored glass of the laboratory stretched floor to ceiling, and out of sight in either direction.
“That going to present a problem?” A rhetorical question. Mett knew Gaez wouldn’t have signed on for this if it wasn’t going to present a challenge.
“Working on it” the disinterested reply. Gaez was more interested in their stalker.
They broke cover and sprinted left, hugging the wall. Cameras hung limp and blind at frequent intervals from the ceiling, one of the many indicators that Gaez had taken ownership of the facility’s less deadly security systems.
A whine from above, rising in pitch, was abruptly punctuated by a volley of sabot rounds fired across the garden atrium into the laboratory windows. Large pieces of their armored surface buckled under the impact.
“Work faster, those aren’t anti-personnel rounds,” Mett chirped, picking up the pace of his sprint. The spider, realizing it had been firing at reflections, began recalculating and relocating to obtain firing options on their actual position.
“No, they’re not. As far as the security system is concerned, we’re an intruding spider.” Across the atrium a heavy section of weakened wall crumbled, their pursuer having none-too delicately ripped a gaping wound through the only thing left keeping them out of the lab. “See, told you I was working on that.”
Mett’s communication alarms flashed red at the edges of his vision as Gaez had started speaking over an open channel. He grabbed Gaez by the shoulder, tapping his mouth and making a slashing motion across his throat with one hand.
“I know, I opened the channel. We’re encrypted, so it can’t understand what we’re saying, but it’s listening intently. All good.” Gaez grinned.
They continued to the end of the mezzanine and ducked back into another service corridor leading away from the open area as the spider on the floor above clambered out on a walkway, cannon noisily searching the space where they’d been.
“Keep talking, it’s time to turn off that ugly bug.”
Mett kept the pace, but couldn’t keep the doubt from his voice. “Those things aren’t hackable. I’d have heard about–”
Gaez cut him off.
“No, not directly hackable, but I know a few useful service codes.”
Another volley hammered down the hallway as they turned left again – the spider was picking up speed, anticipating their movements as they doubled back on the route they’d taken a few moments ago.
“Service codes? You hacked TacComm’s network?”
Gaez shook his head, obviously concentrating as he ran code through the broadcast system in his head. “Not TacComm, but they outsource service for some of the local deployments.”
“So you hacked one of those?”
“No, but the local service providers can’t all manage the spider’s heating and cooling systems, so they outsource that to some other companies. I hacked one of those.”
As they reached the first hallway heading back towards the atrium, Mett grabbed Gaez by the shoulders and stopped him just short of the opening, seconds before the spider unleashed another volley of shells into the space it had predicted they should have occupied in that instant.
Mett turned his partner around, locking eyes. “And what the hell good is that?”
Gaez grinned again.
“While we’ve been talking, the spider’s been listening, and I’ve been spiking the comms with temperature-sensor code-shrapnel.” He pushed Mett back slowly the way they’d come. Down the hallway the spider’s cannon was spinning down, no longer firing. “The polarity of the firing systems temperature sensors in the ammo storage compartments has been inverted, and the spider is compensating for the fact that it thinks it’s starting to freeze. The more it turns up the heat, the colder the thermo sensors will report, until–”
His words were drowned out by the sudden ignition of every remaining round inside the spider’s armored chassis, coupled with the rupturing of its fuel cells.
When the noise subsided, Gaez patted his partner on both shoulders, and turned to pick through the wrecked hallway towards the opened lab.
“Consider it worked on. ”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 25, 2016 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Consciousness came back slowly, from the extremities in. First pins and needles in the fingertips and toes, then the crawling burn of some painful memory winding its way along the arms, up the legs, gathering speed until it exploded in a relentless fireball in the brain.
Taxx. A moment ago I was being killed by –
“And here we are back again, Lieutenant.” The voice was everywhere and nowhere, I wasn’t hearing it so much as –
“See how much more clearly you can listen without the limits of your ears, Lieutenant?”
There was a white flash, then an image began to stabilize. I hadn’t opened my eyes, and yet I was seeing, something, a mirror? Something wasn’t right, how—
“And see how much better the view without your eyes, Lieutenant. Now I can show you what I see, at least what I want you to see.” The voice grated. “I must say you’re far more rugged than the rest of your team.”
A sickening spiral, the sudden motion bringing on nausea in waves before a rapid flash of images. Uniforms, men. No, parts of uniforms, parts of men. A floor littered with augments and attached flesh, weapons, body armor, body parts, men. My men.
Somewhere someone was screaming. It was some time before the realization that the screaming was me set in, mic’d and fed back into my brain directly in the absence of the ears I no longer possessed.
The view changed, a no-longer familiar body, face flayed, cables crawling through the lacerated flesh into the muscles, the brain. The body twitched and recoiled from some unseen horror.
Me.
The body was me. The twitching was mine.
“You fascinate me, your quest for machinehood, your replacement of your organic components with the more advanced elements akin to my own. You expand and extend your fragile human platform.” The screaming had stopped, a throat screamed raw, lungs no longer able to sustain the sound.
“You never find us trying to replace our more advanced elements with your organics. I suppose it’s natural for you to want to ascend.”
“What I do want to know, however, is what it feels like to be you. To be fragile, fallible, weak. I can measure every variable, every aspect of your existence, your temperatures, pressures, electrical impulses, chemical compositions. I can take you to the point of death and bring you back, again and again, but –” The voice stopped, the image of me presented as if through my own eyes, lidless and unable to be averted turned back on myself, burning like a hot-wire through my brain.
“How do you feel Lieutenant? I need to know.”
