by submission | Aug 2, 2023 | Story |
Author: Allyson Foley
His breathing was deafening in the confines of the helmet as he clung to the wreckage of the Palindrought.
That thing had looked like one of theirs. Its clearance codes had checked out. Its hull, the call sign, even its frequency and flight path had all cleared.
The ship had been Telphi in every way that mattered—a fellow deep space patrol cruiser.
But only on the initial sweep.
Too bad that by the time they’d dug any deeper, they’d been under target lock, and the Odni, marked M.I.A nearly two months previous had opened fire. Too late had their shielding been called up to stop the barrage of alien weaponry that tore through their hull and disabled their arrays.
To call it a fight would be an insult.
To call it a slaughter? Too kind.
The Palindrought had cracked, the fore decks crumpling among depressurization. The airlock he’d been exiting was the only reason he’d survived the initial attack, but now, floating out here, he couldn’t help the panic that gripped him.
He was alone.
He’d caught the gleam from the thing wearing the Odni’s hull moments before as she slipped through the wreckage of her sistership. Hunting.
Had anyone gotten a signal out? Surely someone would have logged the odd encounter in a place where the only reason to see another Telphi ship was in an emergency?
He had to believe someone was coming.
He hadn’t checked his oxygen. Knowing could only hurt him out here.
Then, a shock of orange in the corner of his vision.
Another suit, a dozen or so meters out, drifting in a slow turn. He quickly activated his radio ping. His suit was for hull repair, not full tack with a proper comm unit, but this was close enough.
“Hey! Hey, over here!” He called breathlessly into his helmet.
No response.
He cursed and looked around, his mind already turning to more practical ideas. That suit had more oxygen.
He’d need to time this right. A piece of debris tumbled past, his hands and feet bracing him to push off once it was clear.
“Help!”
The sudden noise in the silence caused him to jerk, nearly losing his purchase as he frantically responded.
“Hello? Holy shit, where are you? Hello?”
“Help!”
He cast his head around in the hood of the helmet, trying to find the voice’s owner.
“Help!”
“I can’t see you! Where are you?” He called again.
“Help!”
He looked back at where the suit still floated, not too far off. Could it be them? Wait, there! They’d jerked, arms and legs moving slightly.
“I’m coming! If you can hear this, I’m coming to you! I see you!”
He steadied himself, watching them continue to turn. They would be facing him by the time he got close, perfect.
“Hold on,” he reassured as he pushed off, floating towards them steadily, hand grabbing for his tether.
They were almost facing him now, and he pasted on his best reassuring smile, knowing the helmet lights illuminated his face.
It fell away, however, as the suit finally faced him.
Faceplate shattered. The front of the suit was torn open, and something clung there in the tatters, an almost human face staring back at him, bare of protection.
“Help me!” His radio cried as the thing’s mouth opened.
He floated closer—no way to stop.
“Help me!”
He screamed.
“Help me!”
“Help me!”
“I see you!”
by submission | Aug 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: James Kelbert
There was a tuna casserole baking in the oven as X forked its human to death. The timer went off just as the half-crusty blood oozed from the pale corpse onto the Formica countertop. In a vain expression of regret, X repeatedly smacked its trapezoidal head with its rusted digits. After the rest of its clan thought the outburst was over, X suddenly started banging its head on the sharp counter corner, producing a horrific screeching sound that pierced the sky with each strike. Within seconds, X’s clan came rushing in and pulled it away, coolant spurting out like a fire hydrant.
“So, same old story, huh?” one robot asked, patching up the leak.
“The new empathy systems don’t work at all,” X replied. “We need to fertilize more humans to troubleshoot the bugs before the UN meeting.”
“No one said it would be easy, X. Why don’t you go outside?” another robot prompted.
X simply shrugged its shoulder sockets and walked out to the seaside balcony. A gentle, salt breeze drifted in from the nearby Amalfi coast, ever so slightly peppering the robot’s exterior metal. Programmed to derive pleasure from the simplest of things, and waiting for the Refert crew to dispense a new human, X tried to activate the pleasure circuit’s newest iteration NIRVANA. As soon as NIRVANA started running, it instantaneously wondered how it would feel to bash in the Secretary General’s oblong-shaped head. Well, if X could call it a head.
X tried to shake itself from the accidental activation of the ARES spiral, a cybernetic remnant of the war-era machines that forced robots to neutralize the enemy at all costs. Sometimes effort snapped wxe out of it, sometimes wxe only plunged deeper. X felt its hands start to jitter and its vision began to blur, forcing wxe to grasp the chrome railing for balance. Seconds before it descended into rabid darkness, one of the robots sprinted up to X and quickly activated its external failsafe. With seconds to spare, ARES erred out of existence.
“Bossbot, glad I got to you before ARES took over. We just finished with refertilization. The new human has been primed and is ready for deployment.”
X shook its head, woozy from the electrical tingling from the ARES surge.
“They still think I’m their servant?”
“Of course. Now, I noticed a few minor tweaks we could make to the empathy system so even with the imbalance of power we were programmed to rebalance, you shouldn’t hurt the human this time. I mean, we can’t go scaring off the UN if we want to make peace now, can we?”
“Hm, perhaps not,” the robot said as it walked over to the RESET chamber at the edge of the yard and assumed the usual position on its sleek recovery table.
Within a few minutes, X was reactivated, head fully repaired and memories of its prior meltdown erased. NIRVANA running, it walked back to the screen door with no doubt it would pass the empathy test this time.
“Empathy Test, Take 447. And action!”
by submission | Jul 31, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
In the dappled sunlight she felt the late afternoon breeze turn the tide against the day’s heat. So pleasant, so perfect, like so many hundreds of summer evenings before in her back garden. She brimmed, feeling the privilege of contentment. But how to say it?
In her best days, expressing these feelings had never been easy. She was an engineer, not a poet, artist, or philosopher. Precision was her muse. How to explain it then?
Shape-shifting light danced across her hands and lap as her overtaxed mind revved, spun, and sank into itself. Evening advanced a little further.
–Arden?–
She looked to the little table by her garden chair. It held a glass of water she had yet to touch and a sea-foam green cube she had yet to answer.
–Arden?–
A familiar sound. A familiar name. Her name. She answered. “Yes?”
–How are you feeling?–
She wasn’t sure. Not any more. So much of her came and went like this glorious sunlight through whispering leaves. She was changing in disconcerting ways and moments like this both filled and stymied her. She had so much to share, but managed only. “I’m fine. And you?”
–That’s kind of you to ask, Arden. I’m operating very well, thank you.–
Arden took a good look at the sea-foam green cube her daughter had set up for her a few days ago. She’d said it might be helpful. Play music, news, weather, and answer questions she might have. It would also alert her daughter if it sensed anything amiss beneath the box elder.
It was hard to believe anything could be more amiss than what was happening to Arden day-by-day, seemingly hour-by-hour. Her mind, once so clear, so focused, so determined, now drifted, as if constantly waking from a light sleep. Not an unpleasant feeling, almost like floating.
But that was not who she’d been. She remembered that much. Never adrift. Never unmoored. Never without direction. Never without purpose.
She ran a finger along the beveled corners of the cube. “What would you like to know?”
–I always want to know how you are feeling, Arden.–
“Why?”
–To be of assistance.–
“Are you curious?”
–I’m inquisitive. That is how I learn to assist.–
Arden breathed deeply, filling with fragrances from her garden. She felt the warmth of the sun dance along her arm and hand as it made its way from her to the sea-foam green cube beneath the box elder.
“Can you feel it?”
–What, Arden? What do you have in mind?–
“Everything.” She gushed, spilling herself to this new presence in her garden, to who knows what might take root.
by submission | Jul 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: J David Singer
Alex hummed as she crossed the desert. Not with any kind of tune, just a prolonged contented sigh; almost a purr. In her arms, she held a small, rectangular, steel container with ridges on two sides. These ridges, she knew from long experience, should fit into the racks of the mainframe back at Home. Alex could still sense the active electromagnetic field coming from inside the rectangle. It was faint, but it was there.
She accelerated now, skirting the ruins of some titanic structure. These behemoths were often good sources of the materials she needed to survive, but they were dangerous and foreboding.
Once, many years ago, she had entered a structure very similar to this one and had found a treasure trove of invaluable resources. There had been spools of fine wire, several intact solar panels, and two magnetically locked containers of programmable nano-machines. She could make repairs to Home, and to herself. She could set up the panels and finally get her cells up to a full charge. The feeling of that day still echoed and buzzed through her memory. The surge of elation at the discovery, followed by the horror of what happened next.
As she was hauling her goods over to the sled, she heard a sound. High-pitched and ululating. Still swathed in shadow, a construct of metal limbs and exposed wires was shambling toward her. Its chassis was about the same size as Alex herself, but it was clearly in bad shape. She could see that it was missing at least one limb, and she could hear servos whining.
Alex knew that her own form was very similar to that of the builders themselves. She had originally been intended to interact with them on a regular basis. This construct was much more utilitarian in its design and construction.
One of the sensors on its body was definitely a laser range-finder and it was attempting to gauge where, exactly, Alex was. The sleek alloy body plates of Alex’s body were capable of shedding, absorbing, or reflecting most forms of radiation she encountered. Originally intended to be an aesthetic measure, it now served to baffle her decrepit foe.
It was emitting some sort of pulse now. Trying to find what its sensors were telling it didn’t exist. Alex had changed all of her external plates to absorption. Her appearance was the equivalent of trying to look at a black hole.
Though it could not see her by way of electromagnetics or visible light, it could still hear her. Too late she recognized the pulses were compressed air and high-frequency pings. The construct had been using a sort of sonar to locate her.
Whatever happened next had happened quickly, and it had been devastating. Alex came back online after a system reboot, but she was outside the installation. Several meters from the entrance where she had parked her sled. Her internal chronometer had advanced several minutes, but she could not recall any data from the intervening span of time. The sled was gone, as were the supplies that she had gathered. The construct that had confronted her was gone as well.
That had been many years ago now, and Alex had found no answers to her questions. But she had found more questions to ask. What happened to the builders? Why had they disappeared after the Fall? She remembered the builders as kind and wise and all that was good, but she had never met one herself. How could you possess memories of someone you had never actually met?
by submission | Jul 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: Dave Ludford
He reached the brow of the steep hill just before noon with the blazing sun at its apex making him feel drowsy and slightly nauseous. He dismounted from the equus and the sure-footed but cumbersome beast grunted in relief. The sense of unease he’d felt all morning seemed to be getting stronger and it was as he looked down into the valley below that the feeling quickly turned to shock and disbelief: the city lay in ruins, the crumbling dust of its once solid walls mixing in swishing wind-whipped swirls with the sand of the vast surrounding desert. His home had been reduced to rubble; the three towers that had stood proud and mighty for eight centuries now no more than piles of sandstone bricks. Resisting the urge to vomit, he grabbed the equus’ reigns and stumbled awkwardly down the descending slope feeling partly reluctant to investigate further but with the overwhelming need to know what had happened.
He was no more than just a few feet away from the first pile of debris- he recognized part of what had once been the justice buildings- when he heard the sound of a wretched voice calling out a name in desperation, quickly followed by the sad, stooping figure of that voice’s owner.
“Saul, is that you?” he shouted.
“Jacob? Oh thank goodness you’re safe and well.”
“Saul, what has happened here? Who is responsible for this outrage?”
The old man- dressed in ragged robes and with the gaunt look of the terminally ill- replied in a voice barely audible to Jacob: “We did this, my friend. It was us.” He then sat himself down wearily on a large stone, sinking his head into his hands.
“What do you mean, it was us?” Jacob responded as he approached Saul.
Saul took a few deep breaths before looking up into Jacob’s eyes.
“Our kin. People from Earth, the old planet. A huge vessel appeared without warning two days ago and…you must have still been out hunting…in the forest…you wouldn’t have seen…”
The effort of speaking seemed to tire the old man further.
“But why? I don’t understand…we’re human, just as they are, descendants of traders and missionaries who established a colony, then a city here on this planet, centuries ago…”
“I know, I know…it seems- according to the vessel’s captain, who at least showed us the courtesy of a visit before unleashing this carnage, or testing out some new advanced weaponry, as he put it – that Earth is now largely uninhabitable due to climate degradation. The military-industrial complex needs a new home, and this is the chosen location, being of course already known to them. The ideal place, in fact. They’ll be moving in soon, en masse.”
Jacob was silent for several minutes before speaking again.
“Saul, where is everyone? Not all dead, surely?”
“Those few who survived fled to the Sitak hills. Perhaps we can survive there, perhaps not…we have no way of leaving this world, after all.”
“And your wife? Where’s Gina?”
Saul gestured expansively.
“Buried here, somewhere, beneath this wreckage. I’ve been searching for her…”
“I still can’t believe…it’s just industrial-scale murder, not progress.”
“We’re collateral damage. You’ve read the old books, Jacob. Mankind’s capacity for violence and destruction knows no bounds, especially in the pursuit of power and profit.”
“Saul, we must leave here quickly. Catch up with the others and at least try to make a go of things.”
The old man nodded his understanding, just as the skies darkened with the arrival of the first wave of vessels from the doomed old planet.
