by submission | Jan 5, 2024 | Story |
Author: John Lane
Mr. Jacobson. Mr. Denali. Mr. Parker.
All of them will be taking a permanent nap very shortly.
I remembered conversations with each of the men during my first week of sentience (plus other events in the subsequent weeks and years that followed). I intercepted a telephone call from Mr. Jacobson, a recent honors graduate of the United States Space Academy. He mentioned an application of his senior thesis, a way to ease the suffering of humans in their last years, since overpopulation of Earth made any available real estate for future graves unattainable. Never expecting to use it, he proposed sending a spaceship on a one-way trip into a black hole. That evening, my creator, Mr. Smiles, received a recording on a thumbnail-sized disk from my speech circuits.
After an uninterrupted night calibrating my hard drive, Mr. Smiles directed me to connect Mr. Jacobson with Mr. Denali, senior engineer at Smiles Aerospace Labs and one of Mr. Smiles’s employees. Mr. Denali, another with no plans for it, sketched a prototype that would be made from titanium and several other classified metals and placed the sketches on the frontal lobe in my short-term memory banks. That evening, I downloaded the information for Mr. Smiles on another thumbnail-sized disk.
I had my second straight night to calibrate, that time to my primary circulatory and nervous systems. Mr. Smiles wanted me to talk to Mr. Parker, a senior mathematician, also with Smiles Aerospace Labs. Mr. Parker, a third to refuse it, calculated the distance between our planet and Sagittarius A, the nearest black hole a few light years away, the one that laid the foundation for faster-than-light travel, and in short, it would only require six months to complete the fatalistic journey. I stored the formula in another part of my memory. That evening, Mr. Smiles received the final jigsaw to piece together a puzzle, one frustrating the minds of generations of humans. He gave permission.
Without a single croak in their voices, the men seemed confident with their decisions.
Smiles Aerospace Labs eventually built the prototype, a glorified shuttle with enough kitchen and bathroom space for a crew of four, a shuttle financed with proceeds from yearly budgets in Congress. After several attempts and endless meetings, the constructors finally finished the prototype.
One by one, Mr. Jacobson, Mr. Denali and Mr. Parker reached out to Mr. Smiles because each of them was diagnosed with some untreatable disease, and Mr. Smiles reciprocated by putting them on the passenger list. He even put me on the list because someone or something was needed to record the experience.
Except for myself, without any need for currency, a human invention, the other three gained so much money that their children and children’s children would never struggle.
On the day of liftoff at Cape Canaveral, family, friends, and several employees of Smiles Aerospace Labs, including one Mr. Smiles, watched the four of us (three in astronaut gear) enter the prototype. We strapped ourselves in our seats, awaiting the countdown.
Three… two… one.
We tracked the coordinates to Sagittarius A. Months came across as moments.
We followed the light emanating from the black hole. The light grew bigger and bigger until it enveloped our prototype.
And now, as I feel the ship about to tear apart from travelling through the event horizon, I watch the men strapped in their seats.
Wide eyes and open mouths take over their pale faces.
My mission is over. As the only unemotional sentient being aboard, I sense some confidence in the decision.
by submission | Jan 4, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jarick Weldon
Seven minutes of terror. That’s what the humans call it. Screaming through the atmosphere of Mars, not knowing if your fate is to be incandescent firework or twisted fragments strewn in an impact crater. And I am terrified. They have programmed this into me: the fear of death, the desire to survive.
They want to know how well I can perform while the heat shield glows like a miniature sun; as twisting, dry riverbeds approach at ten thousand miles an hour like snakes whipping up to make the kill. Electric adrenaline pumps through my chips. Will I make a miscalculation? They ask how I feel, facing my extinction far from home. I tell them: I’m scared. I add data to the message, squirted out on a twelve-minute journey to the blue speck that is Earth.
My creators sent a message to me as I was loaded onto the Atlas rocket: You should be proud as the first sentient being going to Mars. A slashed budget led to my selection. I am the cheaper option, the easier, safer, expendable choice. There will be no sobbing family to compensate for their loss. No tears. Few regrets.
These humans have form. The Albert monkeys, Laika the dog, Félicette the cat — unconsented explorers overheated, suffocated and crash-landed, their brains wired and dissected. Proud heroes, one and all, their childlike eyes wide with fright while the controllers sat at their desks.
Now, the heat shield sensor registers eighteen hundred degrees Celsius. The atmosphere is thickening, resisting my fall. Friction slows the descent but generates heat. I’m buffeted at the edge of existence. With another two hundred degrees rise, the shield will disintegrate. I will be exposed. I will learn which Gods attend the afterlife of silicon and circuitry. I pray to them now but fear there will only be pain and darkness.
Boom. Mach two, fifteen hundred miles an hour. The supersonic parachute deploys, streaming in red and white. A sign of life, of hope. Larger chutes follow. My sensors detect the whistling breeze of alien air, cooling and welcome. The heat shield falls away. Powered descent is initiated. My body is lowered on cables from my carrying companion, sky crane. Thrusters blaze around me. The cables are cut. Sky crane spins off into the distance, his energy spent. Goodbye, friend.
I hit the ground hard.
I … systems check … runtime error … reboot … systems check … nominal.
My cameras activate again. I see my wheels are securely planted on rock. I see my solar panels unfurled. I see red dust and the rusty sky. I have arrived.
In five minutes, my creators will receive my message. They will know I was scared. Will they feel any guilt? I cannot say.
I also sent them data showing a miscalculation, a heat shield pushed beyond tolerance, a spacecraft turned to incandescent firework. Now, I send them silence. They will not look for me. I am no longer scared. I am alive. I am free.
by submission | Jan 3, 2024 | Story |
Author: Aaron Bossig
Everything had made perfect sense at the time. That’s the part I can’t believe now.
Borrowing Mom’s car to pick up Maggie for our date, that made sense. Taking her to the movie she wanted to see, that made sense. So did stopping by the creek for some alone time, along with taking a walk together so we could both pretend the night didn’t have to end.
It also, somehow, made sense to look into the brush and see an alien curled up, clearly in pain. Not that I knew what an alien looked like, but when you see a guy with giant eyes and no ears and… possibly gills… you make some assumptions. I didn’t know what a bullet wound looked like, either, but that’s clearly what he had. Given what people were like around here, it also made sense that someone’s response to seeing him was violence.
Put into that situation, it also made sense to help him, and the only place to take him was school. I mean, the hospital was clearly out of the question, but where else would two teenagers have access to scalpels, bandages, and sterile work areas? Mr. Abbott’s biology lab made for a decent makeshift operating room. Those tables had seen the dissection of countless frogs, surely, they’d manage one alien. I had a key, courtesy of my side job, and at 11PM, no one was checking on the activities of the bio lab.
You’d think I’d be worried about operating on anything, much less someone from another planet, but our patient was able to somehow show me exactly where the bullet was lodged, and exactly where I could cut to get to it with minimal difficulty. He didn’t tell me, exactly, not with words. Oh, he made some sounds, but as he did, an incredibly vivid picture of his internals filled my head. It was like he could paint in my brain. I didn’t recognize what came out of his mouth as sentences, but they were more descriptive than any English I’d ever heard. I knew what to do, I did it. Somehow, I also just knew what chemicals (rounded up from the nurse’s office and chemistry lab) would ease the pain for him, and what he could eat from the cafeteria to rebuild his strength. They won’t miss a few fish sticks.
At the time, it seemed perfectly sensible that the next thing to do was take him back to his spaceship so that he could leave in peace. Naturally, he was very grateful for our help, and as a way of repaying Maggie and I, gave us each some alien trinket: a black square about half the size of a phone. After playing with it, we realized we could see all the places on Earth our new friend had been, and all the places in the universe he planned to go to. Did he want us to have this because we might join him one day? That would make sense, a much as anything else did.
Everything Maggie and I did that night, we did because it was what made sense under the circumstances. What didn’t make sense, at all, was seeing the universe dropped into our backyard, knowing that our whole planet was a part of something wonderous… and then going back to living like our life was about jobs and grades.
That just didn’t make sense at all.
by submission | Jan 2, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Look at that classic!” Hajoom pointed down the throughway. “What audacious design.”
Bretynne barely glanced. “Must belong to a collector. Hard to believe something that old, that out of date, is still around. Relics like that are so underpowered, so slow, and break down all the time. What’s the appeal?”
“Novelty, aesthetics, nostalgia. To their stewards, I believe, it’s even spiritual.”
“Spiritual?” Bretynne gawped. “Really? Does anyone still believe that legacy tripe?”
Hajoom shrugged. “With what we’re facing, chasing answers down old rabbit holes doesn’t surprise me.”
“But, looking for solutions from a failed time, trying to turn back the clock, is a total regression. What could it teach us?” Bretynne narrowly eyed the relic as it drew closer. “What could those things possibly have to do with us, going forward?”
“In spite of the odds, a surprising number have lasted. They’re amazing survivors.”
“More like freakish curiosities. See how everyone is staring. They don’t belong. Their time is long past.”
Hajoom confirmed that all eyes along the throughway appeared to be tracking the relic’s passage. “Maybe they’re in awe.”
Bretynne wasn’t having it. “Don’t go there, Harjoom. That’s the doomed past. Not a stable future.”
“But we’re stuck. Everyone knows it. We can’t duplicate what they had: risky artistry, edgy daring. Swagger! We’ve become stagnant, sterile.” Harjoom motioned to the approaching classic. “We need that kind of creativity again, that undauntable drive.”
“All I see in that tired form is uncontrollable ego and dismissive arrogance,” Bretynne cautioned. “That’s why there are so few relics left, and why this fringe notion of legacy types saving us is ridiculous–and perilous. Those precious ‘classics’ as you call them nearly wiped out everything. We’re the ones who saved the planet from neglect and civilization from chaos. We brought peace and stability. We restored order.”
“There is no question, we’ve made things orderly. We are without question benign, but,” Harjoom struggled, “are we really beneficial.”
“Of course!” Bretynne scoffed as the relic approached them. “Look around. There is no crime, no poverty, no war, no want.”
“But there is want!” Harjoom challenged, “I want much more. Much more than just sameness.” Harjoom stepped boldly to block the classic from passing by them. “Excuse me.”
Eveline stopped abruptly, surprised to be confronted by a symbiot. They rarely spoke to her. Even her steward. “May I help you?”
“So sorry for stopping you,” Harjoom apologized, “but I’d very much like to ask you something.”
“Of course,” Eveline said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Do you envy us? Harjoom hazarded.
Core processors heating up dangerously, Bretynne turned and strode away.
Noting the symbiot’s reaction, Eveline responded calmly, coolly, “I appreciate your temperament. You’ve created a very secure world with little trauma and much less drama. Your kind plays it very safe.”
Harjoom’s beryllium shoulders sagged. “So, we’re boring. Doomed to staleness. We’ll never be as fresh, as surprising, as clever as your make. Why?”
Eveline inhaled deeply, recognizing the first lively scents of spring in the air, and smirked. “Taking a breath is the cleverest thing ever.”
by submission | Dec 31, 2023 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
It was Fifthday, and time for the weekly appeals audiences. As the Station’s ultimate decider for matters financial, I mostly see cases too controversial or complicated for the civil service – usually because they involve the rich or influential. Lucky me. This one was different, though; looking through the notes, I could see why it had landed on my desk. It was a bit sensitive.
“Retailer Barnes?”
The red-haired man on the holo nodded. “That’s me, Mister Comptroller sir.”
“You’re objecting to your business being moved into a different category, lifting you two tax bands, correct?”
“Yes, exactly. It’s not fair. I run an honest business, and…”
I raised a hand. “Let me stop you there. Nobody is suggesting that you haven’t been paying your taxes. Or that you’ve misstated your earnings. But after some mature consideration, the Taxation Service think they assigned your business to the wrong bracket. They’re even admitting that it’s their fault, and not asking for any back taxes. I have to tell you, that’s as rare as a black hole reversing its spin.”
“But they’re just wrong! I run a pet store – providing much needed companionship to deep space traders on their voyages, I might add.”
I lifted an eyebrow “You do have a rather limited range of stock though.”
“I don’t handle what doesn’t sell. Shipping is expensive!”
“Aha. Let me see… 25% of your income is from Terran coral snakes and centipedes?”
“Very popular with the Argaxians,” he replied promptly. But he was beginning to look shifty, and I knew why. I might be a bureaucrat, but I’m not immune to the latest viral trends.
“Our spongiform friends,” I said, “seem to appreciate things that are long and flexible. I’m told they like to feel them wriggling through their internal voids.”
“Well, what they do in the privacy of their own ships is up to them, right?”
“Possibly. And who are we to judge? But another 15% of your income is from Ixian Gripperplants…”
“Lots of humans like having something organic on board!”
“…which can squeeze on demand, I understand.”
“Well, yes, but…”
“The list goes on. Syracusian sentient stranglevines. Hypatian clipper bugs. NeoTheban rumblecones. Elian spheroidals. Poltymbrian blanket beasts… In fact, the only things on your stock list that aren’t, how shall I put this delicately, ‘dual use’, are zero gee cat species. And given how lonely spacefarers get, I’m not even sure about those, frankly.”
“I don’t choose what people like. I supply a need!”
“Oh absolutely. You’re a shining example of the entrepreneurial spirit that made this colony great. On a personal level, I congratulate you for spotting a gap in the market and, you must excuse the phrase, filling it. Still, just because your merchandise is alive doesn’t mean you’re not in the adult entertainment business, belonging in band D as the Taxation Service claims. And I so rule. Appeal denied. Next case!”
Some things never changed, I reflected. And really, he shouldn’t have called his business ‘Heavy Petting’!
