by submission | Jan 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: J.D. Rice
“Behave as if you believed you were human.”
Detective Alexander Ducard stood over the mangled, sputtering remains of the robot’s body, the force of the impact having left parts strewn up and down the dark, narrow street.
Water rushed over the sides of his umbrella, which gave him nominal protection against the rain. Not that it did much good in the long run. The water got everywhere, whether he liked it or not. It was practically seeping into his boots at this point, soaking into his pants up to his knees, and somehow still leaving little droplets on his glasses, despite the umbrella’s supposed protection.
The drops of water also splattered over the screen of the robot’s intact command tablet, which Ducard held in his opposite hand, the ominous last order still lit up in green letters against a black background.
“Ordered over the side?” Wade, his junior detective, asked. His umbrella was double the size, and just about as ineffective as Ducard’s. “I heard a story from Baltimore about a man who kept buying robots and ordering them to kill themselves. Nasty business. They eventually had to give him a fine so steep he couldn’t afford to buy any more.”
Ducard shook his head and handed the tablet over to Wade.
“The owner says the robot acted of his own accord,” Ducard said. “And the last order on the tablet came from a hacked account. One minute the robot was cleaning the owner’s windows, and the next, it had jumped out of them.”
If this had been a human body, the site would have been gruesome. As it was, the bits of scrap metal and wiring made walking down the street a bit of an obstacle course.
It was the fourth robot death in as many weeks, but this was the first time they’d found the command tablet intact. Every owner swore backwards and forwards they’d had nothing to do with the apparent suicides, but now the detectives had evidence, for whatever it was worth, that the owners were telling the truth.
“Behave as if you believed you were human,” Wade repeated the hacked command. “How would a robot even do that?”
Ducard could imagine it. What would a human do if they found themselves suddenly unable to disobey an order given to them by another human? What would they do if they could not fight back in any way? Would they use the loophole of their supposed humanity to justify suicide? Was killing themselves just a part of “following orders?”
The detectives didn’t have much time to ponder the question further, as a horrible crash sounded somewhere above them. Ducard then grunted as something hard and heavy slammed into the side of his leg.
“The hell!?” Wade whirled around, gun instantly drawn, as more debris crashed down around them, bits of glass and metal bouncing off the tops of their umbrellas.
Ducard knelt down and picked up the thing that had hit him, finding a mangled robot hand.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Wade repeated, racing over to where another smashed robot body lay on the street, its eyes still lit with a faint light.
“What the hell happened?!” Wade said, grabbing the sides of the robot’s head and forcing it to face him.
“I. . .” the robot’s voice came out garbled and strained, and Ducard limped over nursing a bruise.
“You what?!” Wade insisted. “Why did you do this?”
“I. . .” the robot said again. “I. . . am. . . alive. . .?”
Even as the words came out of its speaker, the light in the robot’s eyes faded.
“Look at this,” Wade said, reaching for the robot’s other hand, which was still attached to the main body. It was another command tablet.
“Behave as if you believed you were human.”
Even as Ducard finished reading, his cell phone chimed. Pulling it from his pocket, he found the same message displayed, green text on a black background, like a robot’s command interface. Wade’s phone, and indeed, every video screen in the city suddenly lit up with the same message.
Moments later, more windows crashed above them, and the detectives ran for cover.
by submission | Jan 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: Sam Brown
“From the beginning?” she asked, “What do you mean?”
Harry dropped his face into his hands and groaned. Charlotte looked around. They were sitting in a quiet corner of the restaurant, a candle between them, the light reflecting off their empty plates.
“How long have we been dating?” Harry asked.
“Three years,” she answered. “Three years today.”
“Today’s the day. Today’s always today.”
A waitress began to approach their table. Before she could say anything, Harry turned to her and said, “We don’t need a dessert menu.” The waitress turned back to the kitchen. “Listen,” Harry continued, leaning in to whisper, “one day, I’m going to invent a time machine.”
“Stop messing around,” Charlotte laughed.
“I’m being serious. And I’ll use it to travel to the past, to relive my happiest memory.”
Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box. Charlotte gasped.
“The night I proposed.”
“Oh, Harry,” Charlotte cried.
“It worked,” he said “the machine worked. I get to relive my happiest memory – forever. It won’t stop. No matter what I do, this moment keeps repeating on a loop.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s okay,” Harry said, smiling sadly, “let’s start from the beginning.”
by submission | Jan 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: David Barber
My good lady and I love nothing more than the theatre, Oscar Wilde being a particular favourite of mine.
During the interval I queue for drinks, a small white wine for my wife and a single malt for myself. I make it clear to the girl behind the bar that I do not drink that blended muck.
Waiting, I notice the bald fellow from the row in front of ours, the one who rested his hand on the plump back of a woman I took to be his wife.
He is ordering a gin and tonic and a tumbler of water, but as he leans forward I realise my mistake.
Jirt are easy to spot because they can’t do hair. The starving, slime-skinned amphibians that poured out of that giant ship of theirs were so grateful and eager to fit in, they set about altering themselves, each new brood less and less like child-sized newts and more like us.
I don’t understand the details, but they can direct their own inheritance in some obscure way, knowledge apparently envied by our scientists, though much good it did them before they landed. In the documentary I watched that generation ship was an overcrowded slum.
The same TV program explained the Jirt we see are all males, their females confined to breeding pools hidden inside the ship. Which only goes to show.
It seems there are also limits to how much they can change, so they’ll never be as tall or strong as us, as I was explaining to my good lady wife the other day, something which bars them from much of the unskilled job market.
Still, they make excellent servants, willing to clean and cook and change nappies for little more than a roof over their head. It was that attitude to hard work that swayed my vote for them to stay.
This sleek fellow must be one of their latest. There was an article in Forbes recently saying how good they are with young children, easy-tempered, biddable and brimming with admiration for human women.
Now having proved so useful, this one is even accompanying someone’s wife to the theatre, while her husband is working late perhaps.
Of course, my good lady is free to go out with her friends, The Ladies Who Lunch, as I call them. I like to think humour is important in a marriage.
We have a Jirt of our own, and I have overheard my better half confide to her friends how pleased she is with what it does, though I can’t imagine allowing it to chaperone her to a play while I’m away on business or off playing golf.
Here are my drinks at last! The girl has taken her time about it and I tell her so.
Further along the bar, the Jirt is saying something to the other barmaid that makes her laugh.
Turning, the Jirt catches my eye and smiles, almost a smirk, its long, supple tongue flicking in and out.
The house lights dim, the next act beginning.
by submission | Jan 23, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Take my advice, if you meet anything that’s going to be human and isn’t yet, or used to be human once and isn’t now, or ought to be human and isn’t, keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.”
That chilling line from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the main reason I consider C. S. Lewis’s classic fantasy book the definitive survival guide for Enchantra. Seriously, you shouldn’t go anywhere on that bewitched planet without a hatchet.
Fans of Enchantra, and they are legion, think me either bigoted or paranoid. They argue that the indigenous, shape-shifting sentients of the planet have every right to mimic human form in any way they please. They variously refer to Enchantrans as sprites and sylphs, imps and nymphs, fay and faeries, pucks and pixies, deeming them playful and harmless.
I call them parasites. Insidious leeches who latch onto your identity and suck your soul dry. Tricky little ticks who burrow into your being, siphon off your authenticity to make a mockery of humanness.
Supporters claim that it’s simply like looking in a mirror, or casting a hologram. That it’s nothing more than interspecies cosplay for Enchantrans. That they can only simulate the form of another creature for a very short time. That they can’t actually inhabit our bodies or minds, or think or speak for us. That they are only able to form a fleeting reflection of our physical selves, much like creating an avatar.
Fans say the Enchantrans’ antics are all in good fun. I say their ability to bedazzle is disturbing. And ultimately demonic.
A type of possession.
How do I know? It happened to me in my first encounter with an Enchantran which, I readily admit, is a most delicate, diaphanous and alluring being. A gossamer glow, a silky aura, surrounds the lemur-like creature and this bio-radiance is thought to be the source of their entrancing mimicry.
To meet and Enchantran is to be put in a kind of trance, an almost out-of-body reverie where you come face-to-face with yourself. The xeno-biologists whose field study I had joined were thrilled by the experience, reporting that interacting with their Enchantran doppelgangers had tickled them pink.
I saw nothing but red. Mocked by the wicked shape-shifting of the heathen Enchantran before me.
You see, I’m not a xeno-biologist. I’m an eco-cleric. A person of peace, of faith, of duty. The duty to bring divine Word to all indigenous sentients in a culturally sensitive way. It is a magnificent responsibility. A sacred charge.
For which I was humiliated. The form the Enchantran reflected back to me was not the portrait of a mild man of peace and harmony, acceptance and tolerance, piousness and sanctity as I saw myself. Rather it was a picture from which Dorian Gray would cower. Such bursting megalomania, such delirious savageness, such flamboyant devilry!
The message was very clear. Our humanity was being stolen and abused. Our eternal souls ridiculed and put at risk. Evil was afoot. The Enchantrans, like any heathen sentients, were not to be trusted.
So, where once I would have reached for the divine Word as an offering of mutual hope and salvation, now I heed the words of C. S. Lewis and feel for my hatchet.
by submission | Jan 21, 2024 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
His finger hovers over the button. His hand is shaking. It’s not through indecision though, but rather appreciation of the enormity of what he’s about to do. This action marks a point from which there’s no going back. The waters of the Rubicon lap at his feet.
He knows, though, that he has elected to follow a greater good, a higher morality and so presses the button. Far above, explosions seal off the kilometre-long lift shaft, a sad end to an incredible feat of engineering. Shockwaves hammer downwards, arriving as a low rumble in the deepest level of the base that he now occupies.
Afterwards, he takes a walk down to the viewing area, its panoramic window looking out into the murky depths of the world-spanning subterranean ocean. He dims the lights and at first there’s little to see in the inky gloom. His eyes are gradually adapting to the dark when a shoal of Glowfish appear, their natural bioluminescence lighting up their surroundings. Soon, Pakards are visible, tentacles pulsing as they push themselves through the chill waters. Even a Plumhorse puts in an appearance, its fibrous limbs propelling an elongated mauve body slowly along the rocky shelf.
Such variety of life, all invisible from the exterior of this world. On the surface, Uranus hangs large in the sky, a pale blue giant of a world, a magnificent sight to be sure. It’s here though, below the ice of its frozen moon Miranda, that the real treasure is to be found – life itself!
His pad beeps an alert and he checks his links to the cameras that still function on the surface part of the base. The relief crew are arriving, but they will find the upper portion of the base unliveable, after his comprehensive sabotage of the life support infrastructure. Without the resources of the base to call upon, they will have little choice but to leave this world and return to Earth.
He knows that they will condemn his actions. However, sealed in, a kilometre below ground, he is unlikely to have to answer for them. He has enough rations to last decades, if he’s careful. It’s just him now, alone on a base with the resources for the original crew of fifteen.
For him, the passing of the Humanity Primacy Act by the United Nations was the final straw. Initially, the discovery of complex biospheres on the worlds of the solar system – on the surface of Titan and in the subterranean oceans of Europa, Enceladus and his own Miranda – brought great joy and excitement, with pledges to protect these novel environments. Now, though, with Earth struggling to support fifteen billion food and energy hungry souls, a defeated pragmatism has overtaken humanity. Its quest for resources must take precedence over the needs of alien biospheres.
Strip mining began on Titan six months ago. The relief crew, landing above, had instructions to explore Miranda for deposits of uranium, rare earth metals and even fossil fuels. They would inevitably, he had decided, end up committing omnicide; the complete destruction of a living biosphere.
He, however, decided to put the needs of this unique biosphere first. It is a greater morality he follows, far above the grubbiness of mere survival. He sits at the glass window, at ease with his decision, watching the indigenous life weave its way to and fro. Even the decomposing bodies of the fourteen other base staff, bobbing gently under a nearby ice shelf, fail to disturb the sense of self-righteousness that keeps him warm, one kilometre beneath the ice of Miranda.
