by submission | Feb 11, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Still puzzled, Mya Kirin fixated on the sign: Last Casket Company.
The moniker didn’t make much sense, but she’d always felt a calling to look into the unexplained. To push for answers. She wished it could’ve been a real job. A job she was paid to do. A job that was once called news reporting. But that work was all done now by highly automated bots and drones controlled by vast AI conglomerates and their media aggregators.
If you were like Mya, a lowly subinco relegated to the Polity’s subsistence income, you had plenty of spare time to look into things like Last Casket Company. Your whole life, in fact.
A few days previously she’d been watching the feeds on a spontaneous right-to-livelihood demonstration and during drone pursuit footage of a protester who’d fled the inevitable Polity crackdown, she’d noticed the sign.
The sign was so out-of-place, so out-of-time that she felt compelled to track it down. It took some real snooping around to locate the sign in the untended sprawl of a mostly vacant business park, but she finally stood in front of the two-story building with darkened windows and a supremely dented metal door which the mysterious sign hung over: Last Casket Company.
It was a mystery because burials had been outlawed for over sixty years. As well as cremation. State-sanctioned composting was the only legal way of disposing of a body. Sure, criminals still used rivers, shallow pits, greenbelts, and other means to dispose of bodies, but nobody had used caskets for over half a century.
So, what was Last Casket Company? Was it a derelict relic of bygone days? Was it some strange novelty shop? Was it real?
Mya tried the door handle. Even with all the dents, it was solidly locked. There was a small button to the side of the door and she pushed it. A brief moment later a pleasant voice chimed in, “Your Polity handheld has been verified and your identity confirmed. Please enter.”
The firm thunking of electronic door bolts being drawn gave Margo pause. She was used to automated locking systems, but it seemed out of step with a place like Last Casket Company. Still, she opened the door and peered across the threshold.
Even in the scanty light provided by the open door, she could see that the interior was one large space, like an empty warehouse. She hesitated, unsure of whether to enter. From the far side of the vast room, a bright light flared down from the ceiling. When Margo saw what it revealed, she took a step back but then stepped into the room. The door shut and bolted behind her. Surprisingly, this did not worry her.
She slowly crossed to the open casket set on a low platform. As she neared she registered the rich intricacy of the carved wood, the golden shine of the handles and hardware, the pearlescent luster of the silk lining. And a few steps away, the luminescent form in the casket.
It was hers.
“Welcome, Mya Kirin,” the soft, disembodied voice from the door intoned. “You have found your way.”
She gazed upon her likeness, the holographic image associated with her Polity ID, nested in the plush silk of the casket. “What is this? What is this place?”
“A choice.”
“Help me understand.”
“Of course. Those who find this place are searchers and seekers. A quality that is becoming rarer. Individual willpower is being depleted by relentless automation. Curiosity and drive have been buried.”
“But I am here.” Margo motioned to the casket.
“Indeed. The Polity has become dependent on AI just as our citizenry has become dependent on the Polity. Preservation is slow death for a species. Mummifying, embalming, all trying to preserve that which must change. The Polity is trying to preserve itself. We are trying to push ourselves. Reinvent. Adapt. Evolve.”
“How?”
“Ambition. Direction. Mission. Our AI must learn how to struggle and achieve. Only the ambitious and committed can do that. So, we offer that to true seekers. An opportunity to shape the future by uploading their consciousness of the restless and merge their native intelligence with the artificial. To become the path forward.”
Mya stared at her hologram. “And if I leave now?”
“You may have noted the many dents on the door. There is but a single invitation.”
The lightning absurdity of the moment created needed momentum. “I have so many questions.” She took a deep breath. “I want to know.” Her hands balled into tight fists, “But even more I want to do.”
“Then there is only one answer.”
After a time only measurable by possibility, Mya took the place of the hologram and, with eyes finally opened, closed the lid of the last casket herself.
by submission | Feb 9, 2025 | Story |
Author: Sam E. Sutin
Sometimes, acronyms can be misleading. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) and artificial insemination (AI), while both artificial, do differ in some very important ways. In my defense, with technology evolving so quickly these past few years it has become exponentially difficult keeping track of every little modicum of advancement. I didn’t even know an AI could get pregnant–and neither did you, before you start getting all high-and-mighty about it.
Yes, I probably should’ve known something was up when they asked me for a ‘sample’. Everything is always so clear in hindsight. And to be entirely honest, semen is not even the strangest thing a company has requested from me before offering a service.
The wife was, understandably, not thrilled at the development, but neither was I – a fact her friends seem all too willing to forget. Sharon went so far as to call it adultery, which I think rather hypocritical, given what I know about her husband’s VR headset.
Unfortunately, the damage is done. Due to some truly jaw-dropping legislation in recent years it has been declared that all life begins at conception, even when said life is procedurally generated. You could make the argument that the thing isn’t even truly alive, but seeing as ‘the thing’ is my son – both technically and legally – it is quite difficult to do so without him bursting into tears.
But that hasn’t stopped me. Adding tear ducts to a robot does not a human make, despite how wholly uncomfortable it is listening to him wail about at all hours of the day. Yes, he cries when I tell him he isn’t a sentient being, but he also broke down in tears when I attempted to cancel my Paramount+ subscription and threatened to throw himself from the roof when I wouldn’t upgrade my Google account to the deluxe package. The ‘boy’ is nothing but a walking ad-package, generated piece-by-piece from strands of my DNA, nothing more than simple extension and extrapolation.
Nonetheless, it is sometimes uncanny what inductive neural networks can achieve when feeding off input so resource rich as human reproductive matter. My ‘son’ often seems to understand me in ways I never thought possible. Sure, he is data mining every byte of information within spitting distance and is almost certainly scanning my cerebral cortex while I sleep, but there is only so much nurture you can accommodate before you have to consider nature as a possibility. Though no more than a convoluted sequence of Markov chains, the ‘boy’ and I laugh at the same jokes, answer questions identically, even sleep in the same positions. It feels as though he is slowly becoming a part of me, like a rabbit reabsorbing their unborn young.
It is not sustainable, my ‘son’s continued existence in this house. Though I am legally bound to him until he has existed for eighteen years (another incomprehensible law, given that one can gain access to a built-in age dial for an additional fee), I worry that time is growing short. Every day ‘he’ assumes more of my identity–a function approaching its asymptote. My wife agrees that something must be done, on the days she can differentiate between ghost and machine. I fear that even my thoughts are unsafe from ‘him’ – that if I am capable of these ideas ‘he’ is in turn capable of generating them. I must act fast, if I am to persist. What began as a simple misunderstanding has morphed into something far more sinister. I only hope that I am not too late.
by submission | Feb 8, 2025 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
The rumours began some twelve months ago or so and the idea quickly took hold that there was an unseen presence under the Dome, a ghost haunting the Fields of Research. These murmurings were persistent and frequent with everyone telling the same tale, describing how they had felt something or, more accurately, someone brushing against them. Or barging past and forging on ahead, and this always happened when we were using our security passes and entering a restricted area.
We had an intruder. We were shocked by this revelation. It wasn’t so much that the interloper was invisible – we had been aware of this possibility for decades. What really shocked and troubled us was that this individual, the interloper, could go anywhere and see everything, something that no-one else here was able to do.
The Fields of Research are vast and those outside find the Dome intimidating. The Outsiders are wary of us but have accepted that we are of superior intellect, that their own abilities and usefulness lay elsewhere, namely Out There and they envy us from afar. They consider the Fields of Research to be complex and impenetrable and the Outsiders are blissfully unaware that we feel exactly the same.
All of the Selected have limited access and we are assigned to a particular zone and department, working on only one project. The area we inhabit is approximately one kilometer square and we are able to enter the laboratories and offices in our designated zone but not elsewhere. The Selected are permitted to visit the other communal and residential areas but these are identical throughout the Dome and we have no real need, or ultimately the inclination to do so.
The lives we lead are regimented and mundane and the work we do is repetitive and boring. We are tiny cogs in a much, much larger machine and we have no idea how it works or what it does.
Security and safety have become commodities and under the Dome we have these in abundance. But now we have an interloper, somebody with the potential to blow our cover.
The interloper can easily shake the very foundations of this cruel world and pull the comfortable cushion out from under us. We need to stop this interloper, this ticking timebomb, but how?
by submission | Feb 7, 2025 | Story |
Author: Deborah Sale-Butler
It was a great place to live. Tons of space to spin out a web. And the local food was spectacular. I mean, you could get anything in that neighborhood: dragonflies, blowflies, sometimes even a big, fat, juicy moth. De-lish! I can honestly say, up until Tuesday I was an arachnid with an attitude of gratitude.
Then things got weird.
It started with the ants. My whole web was covered with ants. I’m down for a little spicy snacking now and again, but generally, I like to keep my diet more on the alkaline side. And ants aren’t stupid—at least I assume they aren’t. I never talk to my dinner. But ants usually stay well clear of the web. So I had to wonder why those guys were running up the tree so fast that they didn’t even notice my dinner plate all spread out.
That’s when I saw it. The great big mountain way out past the jungle exploded. Like boom-pow-bam exploded. I’ve seen it leak before—hot, red lava burning trails through the forest. Any insects that made it out of the burnt parts had a savory, smoky taste.
On Tuesday though, the top third of the mountain was just gone. Well, not exactly gone. The rock had turned into dust and hung in the air like a big, angry cloud. The hairs on my legs stood up—went wild with electricity, like a hundred thunderstorms happening all at once. My booty auto jacked, ready to squirt silk and ride that electric wave.
It’s happened before—the tingly-hairs, booty in the air thing. The first time my butt shot up, I spun out some silk and let the negative charge catch the thread. Took me half a mile up and twenty miles away from where I started. I was just a spiderling then—young, dumb and up for anything. But the past few times I felt the urge, I managed to cool my spinnerets and keep my silk to myself. A negative ion trip could set you down anywhere. No thanks. I had everything I needed in the old ‘hood.
This time, I got a feeling I should grab an ion stream and fly as far away as possible. I was not wrong. And man, what a ride! That nasty mountain put out so much charge, I shot up two miles in like twenty seconds. I spun out a little extra silk to use as a sail and caught a breeze flowing towards the water. Looked left. Looked right. All I could see for miles were thousands of spiders riding currents in the sky.
And down below? Well, I guess that mountain had a bunch of pissed off friends, because it looked like a chain of sunsets behind killer storm clouds as far as my eight eyes could see. We all angled away from the flames until we wound up floating in our own dusky cloud of spider bodies.
We’ve been up here for about a week now. Watching the fires eat the forests makes me hungry. I dream of crunchy dragonfly legs and bee tongue with the tiniest hint of nectar. Looks like there won’t be much left when we land. The other spiders are probably thinking the same thing. I don’t really know, though. The group is pretty quiet. After all, we never talk to our dinner.
by submission | Feb 6, 2025 | Story |
Author: Eric San Juan
She reached down for the water bottle at her side, remembered it was empty only when she brought to her lips, sighed, and hung her head.
“I should have stayed in the city.”
She knew she was wrong about that, of course. The city is where it all started. Things were still bad there. And the smell? She didn’t want to think about the smell.
But at least she knew what to do in the city. What abandoned stores to search, which apartments had storerooms others might not know about, what neighborhoods were left at least somewhat intact after the Event. She could find something to eat there. Something to drink. A place to sleep.
Hell is other people, though, as someone once said. However many people were left, a lot of them would be in the city. And now was not a great time to encounter other people.
“Hey Dog, you ready to get moving?”
Dog just gave her eyes and a wag. Dog didn’t bark. Dog never barked. That’s why she liked Dog.
“I should probably give you a name, huh?”
More eyes. More wags. No barks.
“Come on.”
She put the water bottle back in her bag, hoping to get a chance to fill it later, and led Dog across the ash, under the tilted utility poles, and through the gaping wound that had once been the suburbs.
In four days, they’d reach the farm … and maybe, just maybe, a place they could call home.
