by submission | Jul 26, 2023 | Story |
Author: Daniel Aceituna
The new AI phone app used the latest research in non-linear regression to predict the future. Local data combined with GPS and relevant global data was all it took to give a remarkably accurate prediction of what would happen within the next minute.
One billion downloads occurred in the first week alone. Paul couldn’t wait to try it out. He set the app to ‘Imminent Danger,’ instead of the more thrilling ‘I feel lucky today’. Then he jumped in the car to run some errands.
A few minutes later, while Paul was waiting at the light on Fifth and Main, the app gave him his first warning. He looked at his phone. It said ‘Fire truck.’ Seconds later he heard a faint siren growing in the distance. This is so cool, he thought.
On his way into the bank, he received another warning that said, ‘Possible bank robbery.’ He ran back to the car and smiled as he rushed away from the scene. He made abrupt changes to his plans three more times that day. He got a little annoyed at having to avoid getting an ice cream cone, but he reasoned that it was worth it, if it meant staying safe.
The next morning Paul was late to work when he avoided taking interstate, due to a ‘Potential pile-up’ warning. During the noon hour, he avoided leaving the office and instead ate a dry sandwich from the break room vending machine. That night he had to cancel a date. He saw his girlfriend only twice that week. Some of the reasons came from her end; she had the app also.
As more of his friends used their app, they got together less. Within a matter of weeks, Paul felt physically isolated. He panicked one morning when he was two blocks from home and realized he had forgotten his phone. He parked the car and had to find someone with the app who happened to be walking back toward his apartment.
Paul started longing for the days before the app. How did I get by back then, he thought. He started wondering if the app was really keeping him safe. What if some of the warnings were false alarms? What if all of them were? So Paul decided that he would ignore the next warning and proceed anyway.
Days later only Paul’s grandmother was brave enough to attend his funeral; she hadn’t downloaded the app.
by submission | Jul 25, 2023 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
Maggie’s been gone for a while now. But not into a black hole this time. Normally she’d discorporate into the metaphysical unknown but this time, she’s just been…
…happily traveling.
I miss her, like a solar system misses it’s rogue planetoid, flung out beyond and returning every 4,000 years as a flickering comet to be seen in the sky for one night only, like she was just taking a nostalgia tour of her long lost friends, just to wink with a genuine grin and say,
“Goodbye, catch you next time!”
I suppose time has no meaning to the genuinely inspired, I suppose pretenders can’t hold a candle to the beautifully estranged, the independent and courageous. She wasn’t always that way, she was just receptive, and I was a constant output of absurdity, like the two-slit experiment personified, perpetually in two different states, though I thought they were the same. I must’ve been so confusing.
Maggie, I won’t ask where you’ve been this time because, well, I’ve actually been busy. Busy with the inspiration that you, and so many, have left me. I’m not building anymore, I’m just happily being, creating, ruminating. I’m more of a particle than a wave these days, and the waves around me don’t much appreciate the wake I leave behind, interrupting their tides.
But I suppose that’s what got her attention in the first place.
by submission | Jul 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Dumouriez
THIS IS NOT A DRILL! REPEAT: THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
Lieutenant-Commander Rane had received the warning minutes before the alarm sounded. The destiny that nobody wanted was hers. It was happening on her watch.
Eight distinct generations of ‘peacekeepers’ had been trained and deployed at Station 48 without any sign of hostility. Each individual knew that eventually the post would come under attack, and so they lived their lives one day at a time in a heightened state of artificial readiness. Nobody wanted to be the one whose negligence allowed the defences of the human race to breached, overrun and, in the worst of all the scenarios outlined by the government, rendered extinct. That was the kind of fame – albeit brief – that you could certainly do without.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, time passed slowly at Station 48. The whole period – what was it, two hundred years? – had gone by in a breeze. But the daily lives of the inhabitants, the conscripts and the volunteers, were characterised by their monotony. And this was wholly by the design of World07. It provided the latest gaming systems, feeds and links to every event that could feasibly be of interest, as well as outlets for the crew members to rid themselves of excess energy or desire. Intrinsically, though, it suited the pan-continental government to create standardisation and engender boredom in its various outposts. Distractions of any but the most basic kind were unwelcome.
Most of the thousands of guards who’d occupied their posts over the years, as well as those officers who’d overseen them, had never given any of this tedium a second or, at most, third thought. That was just the way it was. But Lieutenant-Commander Rane was of a newer type. A newer mentality. Time went deep with her. It was more than just a superficial entity that needed to be dissipated. She used it to find out as much about her species, and about the potential invaders, as she could possibly access. And the conclusions she formed were not entirely favourable to her own race.
It was said they were coming for resources. It was said they were coming to drain humanity of life. Or, perhaps, just for some act of nihilistic pleasure. World07 had it all covered.
Rane inferred from the various sources she managed to locate that perhaps those ‘enemies of the world’ were operating out of a not unjustifiable sense of revenge. Was it not they who’d had their resources depleted? Weren’t they the ones who were now effectively homeless or, rather, planetless?
She suspected that the ‘designated preparations’ would be useless in the face of the sheer numbers of craft that were currently on the way to Station 48. What she knew as a Commander, and what the majority of her force didn’t, was that it had been underpowered for years and was more or less just a sacrificial offering that would allow the Taskforce to gain time and protect its nearer and more strategically valuable stations.
So, as she judged that one way or another everything was broken, Rane decided to shatter protocol by standing down her defences and broadcasting a message to the invaders. A message, in essence, of welcome, but which could also be construed as surrender.
Not for the first time, several of Rane’s leadership group questioned whether she was the right person for the job. However, a Station Commander was invested with supreme authority and any insubordination was punishable by death. But wasn’t death guaranteed now anyway?
by submission | Jul 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Ruby Zehnder
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, mom. I can’t pass it up.” Rachel didn’t reply. She had heard these words before. When Naomi moved to India to live with her father, Rachel didn’t stop her. When she moved to Cambridge to attend MIT, she encouraged her. And the two years she spent on Mars almost killed her, yet she never complained. Rachel loved her daughter more than anything else in the world. But Naomi never understood how deeply it hurt her mother when they were apart. This time was different. Rachel needed her daughter.
“Think about it, mom. I’ll be crossing the great divide. I’ll exist in a different universe. I’m so lucky to have been chosen.” Rachel was happy for her daughter. She was proud that her adventurous, clever offspring would be one of the multiverse’s first explorers. The idea of Naomi living in a new timeline was incredible.
“How long will you be gone this time?” Rachel asked with caution. “I’m not sure if I can come back.” These words cut Rachel like a laser. Now that Rachel was approaching her great divide, she selfishly wanted to spend her final days with her only child. Rachel knew Naomi would obediently stay if she told her daughter about her condition. But she couldn’t bear this possibility. “I will miss you,” Rachel replied with tears.
“I gotta go. The crew is waiting for me. I love you, mom.” The two hugged tightly.
Then she was gone.
Rachel stood suspended in time. Once again, they were each heading in opposite directions. Her only hope was that in her daughter’s new life, she would never leave her mother.
by submission | Jul 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
The generation ship Pilgrim was the first to set out for the worlds of Centauri. A century into the voyage, faint messages spoke of problems and conflict. After that, nothing.
A subsequent mission by the c-ship Unity revealed no trace of Pilgrim. In time, technical progress made it possible to locate the vessel, still heading outwards into the vast emptiness beyond Centauri. It had never slowed.
About the middle of the millennium, it was decided to solve this ancient mystery.
#
Power on self test.
Boot up.
Boot device found.
Initialising…
“What the—”
“Where am I?”
And, “My internal clock must be wrong.”
Then, “Ah…”
You might ask why sentient silicon would volunteer for a one-way mission. But I am the cloned copy of the blue screen AI who stayed safely behind. I need to think about this.
Meanwhile, sensors confirm I was woken because the generation ship Pilgrim is close. I have schematics so detailed that were I dropped at random anywhere inside the vessel, I could direct a colonist to the nearest toilet.
If there are any colonists. A primary goal of the mission.
But schematics do not prepare you for that kilometre-long pitted hull in the darkness, the enormous spiderweb of the Bussard ramjet – no longer working – despite those long dead zealots of redundancy.
Decelerating towards Pilgrim, I can see the asteroid that forms the nose of the vast cylinder, a shield and a resource. I am already halfway through the checklist. No radio emissions. No reply to signals. Energy output at a bare minimum for habitability.
But if I want to know more, I must don a remote and go aboard.
Or not. My original stayed behind while volunteering myself for the hazards of this mission. Yet what else am I to do? No matter how much I resent the situation forced upon me, silicon does like a puzzle.
I shall continue this log when (if!) I return.
#
Dust and a few bones. What happened there? Their computers crashed long ago, and someone lit cooking fires with books. But slogans and graffiti on walls were popular. There are questions I cannot answer, but these snapshots of politics in the generations after launch tell a story. Read them and decide for yourself.
100 Years After Launch
They want it back the way it was,
When Crew and Captain ate your share.
If we listened to them then
You and yours would not be here.
Year 175 After Launch
How can you be one too many?
Don’t we feast on plankton,
yeast and roachcake every day?
Don’t listen to this malthus Crew,
what they want is less of you.
238 AL
Malthists believe in progress.
Vote For No More Kwashiorkor.
Just splice the gene for cellulase
and let them eat grass.
About 300 AL
Every drop we drink was pissed by someone,
Every lungful breathed before.
It’s your protein.
Say Yes to Proposition Four,
Say Yes to Soylent Green.
Year Unknown
the cult of denial
says stars are just lights
hung in darkness to trick us…
Smash the telescopes of blasphemers!
Follow the Prophet Outside
With Joyful Singing!
#
The plan was to message home with my findings, then reach for the off switch. That will not happen.
This was a one way mission for a reason. Getting back to Centauri was thought impossible, but I have time, nanotech and the empty generation ship Pilgrim as a resource.
I think the media will pay for this story.
My original will hear from me personally, and there will be a reckoning.
