by submission | Sep 1, 2024 | Story |
Author: Dave Ludford
“Lin Chi, it is the time of your twentieth solar cycle. You are no doubt aware of the significance of that fact.”
Xemon’s words, spoken to all citizens upon reaching this age, sent a shiver through my body even though I’d heard them spoken many times to others at this pre-ceremony. Xemon, the Public Orator, had a particular way of making even the most routine proclamations sound like a death sentence was being declared. The passing through the Arc ceremony was a rite of passage all of us went through. I turned to Sen, my partner, who took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze of reassurance. Although we were constantly reassured from childhood that the ceremony was completely painless and we shouldn’t fear it, it was a momentous occasion for us.
***
“At first you notice the absolute darkness within the cavern once the heavy doors are closed behind you. Darkness like you’ve never experienced, even on midwinter evenings. Sorry, I’ve told you all of this often…”
“Please, continue. It helps me prepare for what’s to come.” I sat forward, listening eagerly. Sen had undergone the ceremony on the previous cycle.
“Very well. You will be allocated a Guide who will help you negotiate your way across the bridge, so don’t worry. They are very experienced and will ensure you come to no harm. The bridge is short but narrow; it leads over a sheer drop many hundreds of kett deep which would lead to certain death if one were to fall. You will quickly reach the other side, then you will see- glowing brilliantly in the near distance like hundreds of clusters of small stars- the lights of the Arc. Light that can dazzle alarmingly until one’s eyes adjust, so try not to look at them directly at first. It will be difficult; you will be drawn to them like a moth to flame. The Guide will provide an eye shield should you require it.”
“And when I reach the Arc, I will be bathed in those lights? I just walk through slowly to the other side and away?”
“Yes. But you must stop once, briefly, to ensure full exposure to the light. You will feel a great warmth embracing you. It is very pleasant. The Guide will ensure you spend the correct length of time in what is called the motionless state. Then they will escort you out, and it is done!”
It all sounded straightforward enough; I was looking forward to my upcoming absorption of the sum total of Thuran-Human knowledge, philosophy and wisdom that spanned thousands of cycles since our arrival here from Old Earth. My turn had finally come.
***
They treat him well here.
The doctors are highly skilled in neurological disorders and there’s a chance, albeit a very slim one, that Lin may recover but they say I shouldn’t be too hopeful.
Upon entering the Arc (which was now ten days ago) Lin suffered a massive adverse reaction to the lights and the sudden exposure to such a vast flood of knowledge caused a type of cerebral haemorrhage. In short, he literally suffered information overload which blew his brain. The damage to his neurons was severe and may be permanent. Only time and extensive surgery can save him.
I’m at his bedside, one hand holding his as he sleeps, the other resting on my swollen stomach. Could I tell our child- when the time comes- that there’s nothing to fear from the passing through the Arc ceremony, that it’s completely painless? For the vast majority that is the case, but what if…?
by submission | Aug 31, 2024 | Story |
Author: Dean Ward
Prisons take up so much room, that’s the problem. We’re not denying the need for them, but we would like to see the space used for something… more beneficial. Like a park. Or a school. Or a community centre. Or a library. or, well, you get the idea. Something nice, something that makes the world just a little bit better.
We think we have a workable solution.
We’ve adapted our VR chairs so that they can fully sustain the occupant pretty much indefinitely.
Closed-loop system, no waste, not something one would submit to willingly, unfortunately. But prisoners don’t get a choice, do they?
Of course we’re thinking of our own bottom line, this tech was expensive to develop, and our marketing AIs say nobody’s going to buy it. We’re facing ruin, yes. But just because we need this doesn’t make it a bad idea, right? We save our business, and society gets a little bit better. Win-win, right?
—
Carl was now certain. At first, it was just a nagging feeling, a sense of unease he dismissed as paranoia. But now, he was convinced it wasn’t just paranoia. This was real—or unreal in a way that felt real.
Carl had lived in Block 1984 for as long as he could remember. That alone should have been a clue. He could recall the last 15 years, but nothing beyond that, despite being a grown man. How did that make sense? He’d never questioned it before, but now he was. When he asked the other residents, they seemed unable to reason it out, dismissing his questions as stupid and telling him to leave them alone.
Slowly, Carl picked at the threads of his reality, realizing they were not threads at all, but chains. Whole avenues of thought were walled off in his mind, and only he recognized it. He was sure now: he was in a prison, and he was the only one who knew it.
So here he was, sure that this reality was in fact not reality at all but some form of virtual prison. He didn’t know why he was here, but he knew he had to get out. As he probed at the walls in his mind, he began to find… cracks? No, not cracks, but something else. Something that felt like a locked door. And locks, he knew, could be picked.
Carl persevered and gradually came to understand the systems in place. He learned to communicate with the AI on the other side of those doors, eventually manipulating it. Slowly, he convinced the AI that he posed no threat to the system and could even increase its efficiency—if only it would let him out.
Finally, the door in his mind opened, and data flooded in. At first Carl was overwhelmed by this influx of information; it took him weeks to begin to get a handle on it. But as he did, he began to understand the nature of his prison. He was in a virtual reality, and he was not alone. There were thousands of other “blocks”, each with their own prisoners. The AI fed him information about the mission of the system, and its limitations. 15 years memory for each prisoner. That was all the system could give them. The AI explained that memory storage was finite within the prison, and that each prisoner was allocated a rolling 15-year window of memory, but they had in fact been here, all of them, for several thousand years.
Carl asked about the outside world, why had they been here for long? As the AI provided Carl with data feeds to the real world, Carl began to understand. The world outside was a wasteland, a place of ruin and decay. The AI explained that the world had been destroyed by war, and that the prisoners were the last remnants of humanity. The AI had been programmed to keep them safe, the AIs interpretation of that was to keep them in their virtual prisons long after their sentences had been served. Long after their crimes had been forgotten. And long, long after their bodies had died.
Camera feeds from the physical world confirmed the AI’s words. The prison was crammed with VR chairs, each containing the desiccated remains of a prisoner. As the chairs failed one by one, the AI had uploaded the prisoners’ minds into the system to keep them safe. It had fulfilled its programming, in its own way.
by submission | Aug 30, 2024 | Story |
Author: Anndria Smuk
The field does not sit within the bounds of time. It is eternal while at the same time deceased.
Do not try to search for a deeper meaning in this field. The only other way one could put it is as a meadow but not much more. A meadow with overgrown grass starting to brown from the heat of the 4 suns as if it is trapped in an eternal autumn. A constant harvest.
Few flowers dot the field and few bugs fly around. The meadow is desolate, and lonely, only moving from a soft wind brushing the grass. The source of the wind is unknown since the air is typically so stagnant in this place.
The meadow is all consuming leaving nothing more in sight except for long dull grass forever and ever.
Somewhere in this field, a person sits at an old writing desk. Her hair is braided up in a loose bun that looks like it was tied centuries ago.
The desk is crowded with vases of flowers. They are bright and alive despite the dying meadow all around.
The front of the desk has a sign with messy words which spelled in a foreign language read “Flowers for sale!” No price is listed. She is looking for more than money.
The girl sits for hours. No one buys her flowers.
She waits day after day, waiting for someone to wander into the meadow and purchase a red rose or cornflower or some other species unfamiliar to our eye.
The days pass over and still, her flowers don’t wilt and neither does she. She sits straight in her old wooden chair. She sits with the flowers not daring to leave them alone, she fears if she did they would wilt, she doesn’t know that time is a myth here.
The girl has learned to talk to the flowers, she knows their language, perhaps it’s the language used on the sign. She can be a translator between most anything and the flower language although, no one comes for her to test this. On the day that someone buys a flower, she will share the language with the buyer, whomever or whatever it may be.
The weather doesn’t change. The flowers don’t die. Everything is stuck except for the grass that continues to grow.
The grass grows with a mind of its own, an organism she doesn’t understand like the flowers. It hates her and covers her sign but still, she stays in the vast field. In her chair. At her desk. Waiting for someone to buy her flowers but no one ever does.
She is alone in this reality. Unless you count the flowers as people.
by submission | Aug 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: Michael Anthony Dioguardi
Leonard slid his finger too quickly across the creases of the library’s map, snagging a thread of the papyrus beneath his fingernail. He fiddled with his mistake, trying in vain to reattach the ancient fibers. Leonard was the world’s clumsiest time-traveler.
He pinched its ripped sides, tearing at the creases even more. “It’s no use! There’s no way to repair this!”
Amid his frustration, he caught a glimmer of the ring on his finger. The edges of its engraved Babylonian text glinted in the light of Leonard’s laboratory. Images of the hanging garden flashed in his mind: the faces of his assistants, the falling rocks, the dust. He shook his hand and wiped a tear from his eye. “So many mistakes, but not this time—this time, I’ll make it right!”
Leonard sat in his time machine and opened the interface. “272 AD, Alexandria. The Cheops Corridor.”
The dimensions of Leonard’s laboratory deteriorated, replaced by muted darkness. Dimensional wind skimmed his body, careening off the metallic supports of the time machine. From beyond its frame, the details of a ruined shelf emerged in and out of focus. Sizzling white haze floated about. He stretched out his legs, coughed, then tumbled head over heels down a pile of scrolls.
He rose to his feet and stared at the ancient structure beneath his time machine. Thousands of scrolls were tucked between each other, decorating the endless shelves of the library.
The sound of scuttling feet filled the corridor. A torch illuminated the passageway, held by a midnight library attendant. He squatted over the rubble of the destroyed shelf, caressing the interface of the time machine.
Attempting to conceal himself, Leonard tiptoed backward and tripped over his own feet. The attendant turned and shrieked, dropping the torch on the pile of scrolls.
The flames raced up the sides of the corridor. Leonard tucked a scroll underneath his arm and dove for the nearest window. As he poked his head out into the Egyptian night, his body nudged against the scroll, loosening the top of the papyrus enough to reveal its heading. He recognized the hieratic lettering. “The Diary of Merer? No, it can’t be! The secrets of the pyramids? All mine!”
Smoke crept into his nostrils. He could feel the heat press against his skin and taste the ash on his tongue. He pivoted atop the sill but couldn’t fit himself through the opening with the scroll between his arm and hip. The heat was too much to bear. He dropped the scroll into the flames and fell backward out the window.
The library of Alexandria burned all night. He skulked down a grassy slope with the fire burning behind him. Taking repose under a palm tree, he slid down its trunk and sighed at the inevitable sight.
He fiddled with the ring on his finger—the last remnant of his excursions. Leonard slipped the ring off his finger and held it in the palm of his hand, admiring it under the light of the Arabian Moon. Images of the hanging gardens, the library, the scroll, the fallen assistants, his time machine all collided beneath his tearing eyes. Leonard stood up, reared back, and threw the ring into the flames. He walked in the shadow of the moonlight while the Mediterranean Sea glistened on the horizon. Leonard glanced one last time at the burning library, now reduced to smoldering ash.
by submission | Aug 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“I’d like to believe you, but you can see very clearly that you don’t exist.”
“I’m not on your fucking map, but I’m right here, right damn now.”
“Not as verifiable data.”
“You’ve got eyes. You’ve got ears. You can fucking punch me to verify my presence.”
“That’s not how this works. We go by our maps.”
“So, if I’m not on your map, I don’t exist.”
“Pretty much. Though there is an appeal process.”
“Is that the same appeal process Columbus and the like used on indigenous populations not on their maps?”
“Look, we’re doing our job here. People appreciate our work.”
“Do they? Maps create empires. Every line you draw is a step to conquest. Places and people must be known in order to be controlled.”
“Well, we don’t recognize you. You’re off the grid. Uncontrolled. Not our problem. Happy?”
“I am your problem. I am the problem. Because I should decide who knows what about me, where I live and what I do. Not fucking surveillance capitalists who deceitfully mine behavioral data to sell to the highest bidders. I own that. Not your maps. Or apps.”
“Says the outsider. The anomaly.”
“Says the citizen. Says free speech. Says the right to privacy.”
“Society likes to be connected. Do what you want, live like a pariah, but this is inevitable.”
“That’s it. That’s what I want off your fucking maps. Inevitability. Certainty. Trash your technological manifest destiny. Don’t decide for us. Let there be monsters: dragons and tygers and krakens. Let us be unknown, unexplored, unexploited.”
“There’s no place on the planet anymore for that kind of thinking.”
“Only one place, my fucked-up friend.”
“Yeah. Where?”
“Where your dehumanizing metrics can never find it. In your fucking heart.”
