by Stephen R. Smith | Feb 2, 2007 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The building’s glass stretched skyward from the sidewalk, turning back looks, and draining the features from their reflections. Stone stepped into the turnstile, and with a quick twist, the glass cylinder dutifully deposited him inside.
At the far end of a wide corridor sat a single guard behind a desk. Crossing the distance, Stone could feel the space breathing him in, swallowing up the evidence of his passage. The walls shone, lustrous and grey. The floor, black as night and polished to a marble sheen was devoid of any mark. A breeze from the vaulted ceiling above seemed to be inhaled by the stone beneath his feet.
At the desk, the guard seemed outwardly oblivious to his presence, however his intra-retinal’s were scrolling reams of data onto panels projected around his field of vision, and he systematically checked and rechecked them as Stone approached. The air pulled past Stone’s body was analyzed, and the chemical signatures of everything from the coffee he’d recently finished to the perfume of the last passerby on the street was neatly itemized. Stone was a veritable soup of chemicoscentia, but for the purpose of entry, was clean.
“Mr. Stone, your weapon has been tagged and locked, do not attempt to use it while you’re here.” The guards voice was dull, unreadable, monotone. “There’s a lift waiting.”
A single door stood open beyond the guard station, and Stone strode purposefully to it, noting the lack of visible controls as it closed. Beneath his clothing, miles of tattooed network fabric bristled on his skin, the delicate and barely visible mesh of hairlines picking up the sudden onslaught of scanners surrounding him, electronic and otherwise. A hundred meters from the door he had broken the hard link between his internal and external net devices, and now his sub-dermals chattered back with random ad programs and auto-responders. Several whitehole and honeypot programs would lure the more sophisticated scanners and let them chase each other around beneath his skin, while his core remained untouchable.
The chrome door disappeared silently to one side and Stone found himself in another long rectangular room, featureless but for a pair of chairs opposite a large flat desk, cantilevered from one wall. On the far side, a grey haired gentlemen in a dark pinstriped suit stared coldly at him, his eyes strangely magnified by rectangular lenses suspended from either side his nose.
“Come, sit.” His voice crackled with impatience. Stone stepped from the lift, and crossed the room to the chair, noting the lack of retort as his boots impacted the floor.
The desk was bare save for an alloy ingot, the word ‘Director’ etched into it’s long face. Stone slipped into the vacant seat, feeling rich animal hide stretch beneath him, and sensed the chromed alloy tube frame re-tension itself to accommodate his considerable bulk.
“Director.” Stone eyed the man suspiciously across the dull surface of the desk “I guess you’d be the C.O. then?”
“I’ll not waste your time or mine, Mr. Stone. I am the only man you need to concern yourself with.” The Director leaned forward, steepled his fingers and propped his elbows up on the desk. He spoke with obvious purpose, enunciating each word carefully.
“You’re a man with skills Mr. Stone, your military and public service exploits have not gone without notice, which is what has brought us together today.” The tone was factual, not conversational. “Your talents are being wasted, and we have a want for men with your potential within our group. We prefer to recruit post-military service personnel, as you are as a group far easier to augment with training, and upgrading wetware is much more expedient than installing it and waiting for the development of adequate proficiency. We can offer you significant expansion of your capabilities, and in return you will be indentured to us for a period, reporting solely and directly to me.”
Something about this man wasn’t right, and on a whim, Stone leaned forward and abruptly severed the hardlink to his retinal-implant. The usual overlay of information disappeared, environmental data no longer littered his vision, and the room softened and the shadows deepened, no longer digitally enhanced. For a fraction of a second, he could have sworn he was alone in the room, until he blinked, and found the figure still before him, no longer haloed in a heat signature, and now clearly amused.
“Mr. Stone, you’ll find that your sense of reality and ours differs on many levels.” The Director sat back in his chair, smiling. “You’ll also find that I don’t need your archaic hard links to get inside your head.”
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by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 17, 2007 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Marcus leaned, hands shoulder width apart on the pipe steel railing, looking down upon his brothers vacated domain. He’d been gone three weeks, and yet the tear inside was as raw now as it had been when the call had finally come from the hospital.
Eleven minutes separated them at birth, but Nathan had always considered himself the ‘big brother’, more athletic, more self assured. Marcus grew up always right beside him, and yet forever in his shadow.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and in that instant was laughing and rolling on the families basement floor, trying desperately to gain the upper hand, having it, just for a moment before his twin would twist free, and lock him in a strangle hold. “You may be fast, but I’ll always be faster little brother.” Tears struggled to the surface as he reopened his eyes and surveyed the carefully orchestrated chaos spread out below.
They’d been so very much alike as boys, through grade and high school. Only in university did they start to assert themselves differently, Marcus pursuing biochemistry, and Nathan robotics. They’d become fiercely competitive, starting countless arguments at family dinners over the relevance of each others work, and betting who would be first to discover the secret to perpetual life. Nathan looked to replace inadequate body parts with alloys and electronics, while Marcus immersed himself in the promise of carefully manipulated DNA.
The space below was littered with opened and abandoned crates, some offering glimpses of skeletons cast in exotic metals, some polymer organs of indeterminate function. The floor all but hidden beneath work benches, each littered with what seemed like miles of fibre optics and piles of microelectronics. Test equipment perched on benches and wheeled carts, tools packed counters and shelves, and every vertical surface flickered alive in liquid crystal, scrolling data from hundreds of watched processes.
Nathan had gotten the cancer, not Marcus, that was something they wouldn’t share. He supposed it must have been eating at him for years, his big brother too busy, too stubborn to see a doctor until it had advanced too far to treat. He’d gone from vibrant to vapour in three short months, merely a withered and empty shell at the end.
Marcus forced himself along the mezzanine level, orbiting the room to the stairs, his Oxfords falling heavy on the expanded metal treads as he descended into his brothers world. The wall at the foot of the stairs obscured behind a motley collection of full sized mechanical men, each in various states of construction, or deconstruction, he really had no way of telling which. At the end of the row, one stood notably complete, draped in a lab coat and comically garbed in chinos and workboots. Marcus stopped, face to face with the strange mannequin, and wondered who his brother had envisioned as he crafted the features on this polymer face, somehow familiar, and yet still so completely alien. He reached out to touch it, and in an instant, the machine snapped to life, stepping forward and grabbing his outstretched arm, twisting it forcibly behind his back. Marcus found himself stunned and off balance, having turned completely around to avoid having his arm torn off. He’d barely thought to cry out before the machine had him pinned neatly in a vice like grip. A scream died in his throat, as a voice whispered in his ear “You may be fast, but I’ll always be faster, little brother…”
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by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 1, 2007 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The air was heavy with the stench of decay and turbulent with dust. The walls reverberated with the sound of treads biting into the war torn asphalt outside. A man half crouched and half ran from one shattered row house to the next through holes broken in walls and battered door frames until an overturned bathtub offered itself as a hiding place, and he crawled gratefully inside. He pulled a well worn thermal blanket around himself and the infant girl strapped to his chest, careful not to leave any skin exposed to the scanners outside. He then ceased all motion, and waited.
It was not supposed to be like this. He would not have brought a daughter into this world if he’d have known that a day before her first birthday he’d be fighting for their lives hungry and homeless. It shouldn’t ever have come to this.
She seemed to understand, she never cried, never fussed, just curled up against his chest and waited with him patiently until the danger passed. These streets had been vacant for months, no one lived here, nothing lived here. Soon the patrols would leave and he would be able to forage food for them both in relative peace, at least for a time.
He could sense the prying electronic eyes burning through the walls, scrutinizing the spaces for any living creature they may have missed. He dared not move, he barely breathed for fear the warmth of his exhale would expose them, and all would be lost.
The grinding of the machines faded, yet still he waited until he could be sure it was safe before climbing out of the tub, and venturing tentatively outside.
A sudden flash of light on the horizon caught his eye, and he could but stand and stare as a wave of bright light walked the landscape towards him in silence, obscuring everything beyond it’s boundaries, bearing down on them like a judgement.
He clutched his daughter to his chest, and looking down, was suddenly caught in her gaze. This would have been her three hundred and sixty fifth day of life, and he’d failed to keep her safe. She stared back at him, eyes filled with a light of their own, of peace and understanding. He was still staring when the wall of light struck them.
Blinding light turned to utter blackness, blankness, and then the dizzying rushing of his world gave way suddenly to the sound of a new born baby’s cry.
“It’s a girl, you have a baby girl”. He followed the sound of the words on waves back to the nurse who had spoken them. “Would you like to hold her?” With trembling hands he accepted the pink mass wrapped in blankets and cradled her to his chest.
In the hall outside the delivery room, a news reporter spread across a wall of TVs spoke of unrest overseas, of diplomats trying to diffuse a delicate situation before it could escalate into armed conflict. He warned of a potential world war.
“It’s good luck you know, to have a daughter born on the first of the New Year.” The baby was silent now, straining half closed eyes against the light, trying it seemed to find his gaze with hers. “Have you picked out a name?”
He had. “Hope.†Speaking the name out loud released a torrent of emotions, tears suddenly streaming down his face. “We’ll call her Hope.â€
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The 365 Tomorrows Free Podcast: Voices of Tomorrow
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 25, 2006 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Zero hour is struck on an instrument of time beyond the grasp of mortal men. Above the sky over the northern pole of the earth, a great creature slowly shakes off the remnants of a rather lengthy slumber.
Eight bristling legs unfold and stretch, then hoist aloft its swollen belly after having lain dormant for three hundred and sixty four revolutions of its ward below. Plucking silken web strings like a harp, the guardian navigates a path along the lines of longitude, effortlessly traversing the vast distances around the globe, from one pole to the other and back again, pausing only to check the latitudinal lines for damage or intruders.
The reflected moonlight shimmers and dances across eyes of a billion facets or more. In each of these facets, were you to get close enough to look, one would see a life reflected from the planet beneath. Through the sleeping months, the spindly spider sated itself on the love and loathing of the broken beings of the earth below, growing fat on the endless feast of emotions, and now, its web once again secured, she begins to weep. A single tear falls for each human being, tears cascading in sheets as she traverses the planet once more with meticulous care. Billions of droplets plummet to the earth as she covers every square mile of the globe, traversing the latitudes slowly so as to stay always in the hour of darkest night. As the slow moving blanket of astral droplets fall, each passes from the ethereal to the real, trailing behind a spiral of silken fiber, coiled and shimmering through the sky. Upon finally reaching the earth, each unfolds and on eight tiny legs of its own delivers its own self by following a signature trail of emotion to the place where the life of its origin sleeps. The tiny creatures negotiate a passage in through letterboxes, open windows or down cold chimneys to arrive at their predetermined destinations.
It is here that, were anyone present to see, one might question whether one was really awake, or simply in a state of childlike dreams. In each house, the tiny creature shakes rhythmically, drinking deeply of the wants and desires of their chosen one, fattening themselves on raw emotions before transforming themselves into some meaningful token to leave in their place, first spinning themselves into a cocoon of coloured silk and then metamorphasizing into some little trinket of deep personal meaning.
Having traversed the whole world again, and with her work now done, the guardian lumbers to the top of the northern pole once more, emotionally and physically spent, to slumber again, until another year has passed, and the time should come for her to awaken and restore the balance of wakeful dreaming once more.
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by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 21, 2006 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The big bike tugged at his gloves, pleading for the roll of the wrist that would send the 6 cylinders into a frenzy of combustion and release. Patience. He eased out of the garage, coasting down the parking ramp onto the drive before gently throttling up to escape the confines of the ‘civilized’ community in which he lived.
Outside this walled world, miles of twisting and drifting asphalt were waiting.
The smell of hot metal and spent fuel evaporated in a torrent of burnt rubber, and then nothing but the rush of country air as he stretched out atop the gargantuan engine held aloft by two massive gyroscopes of alloy and polymer veneer.
This was what it meant to be alive.
The tach alarmed through each gear shift, redline overlaid in his visor as he pushed the hardware as far as his courage would allow. 200 kilometers came and went in a heartbeat as the world rushed towards him through the ghostly image of the speedometer, the machine purpose built for speed tightening and tuning on the fly. The countryside blurred, thousands of milestones on the periphery of his vision turned liquid in a single stream of molten landscape.
A sudden sharp rise in the road forced the suspension to load up, and as the bike flew over the crest of the hill, that potential released as bike and rider caught air and flew. The sudden rush of adrenaline and endorphins lasted only a fraction of a second before the image of a truck crashed through the ‘260’ emblazoned in his visor, through his brain and turned his world dark.
The light was faint at first, and there was the sound of some throaty beast heaving breaths nearby, keeping time with the rising and falling of his chest.
Antiseptic, and ammonia, the smells were unmistakable and cut through the haze. The light was bright now, and defined as he opened his eyes to the silhouette of a woman hovering over him.
“Nathan… Nathan, can you hear me?” The voice was pleasant, calming. A different voice spoke from somewhere nearby, one almost familiar. “Yes… what happened? Where am I?” Nathan realized the words were his own.
“You were in a terrible accident Nathan, you’re in the hospital now, you’ve been here for some time. It’s a good thing your RAAC tag was up to date.” He vaguely recalled the ‘Resuscitate At All Cost’ tag he’d been issued when he reached his eighteenth birthday and his donor commitment was up.
“They’ve done a wonderful job with you.” The cheerful voice moved around him now, straightening sheets.” I was able to get you prime plus a quarter on a twenty five year term, so you’ll be able to make reasonable payments. You were partially at fault, so the Insurance company only covered the basics. We’ll go over the documentation with you when you’ve started rehabilitation.” Nathan’s mind reeled, twenty five years of payments on what? He felt a sudden rush of anxiety.
“There will also need to be a change in your accommodations once you’re released. You’ll go through mandatory integration into a restricted community.” The woman stopped fussing for a moment and stepped back.
“Restricted?” Nathan puzzled aloud.
“Oh, yes, restricted. You lost both legs, one arm from the shoulder and one from the elbow. Your jaw and voicebox have both been replaced as have your kidneys, spleen and a significant portion of your digestive tract. Your left lung and two valves in your heart are new and your torso has been extensively reskinned. You were above the threshold for integration for a while there Nathan, until your second kidney failed, but I’m afraid that tipped the scale.”
“Scale?” Nathan’s voice shook as the scope of his injuries began to set in.
“The Scale Nathan, your Humanity Index. I’m afraid with the amount of synthetic material in you, you no longer meet the burden of humanity, and as such we can’t exactly integrate you with the mainstream communities. You’ll be found work, of course, and a residence. Don’t worry Nathan, we won’t abandon you, we do pride ourselves on being humane.”
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