by submission | Jul 7, 2023 | Story |
Author: A. R. Carrasco
Necrology enthralled the children of Planet Symbiote.
An eight-year-old with slicked-back obsidian locks raised his hand.
“Yes, Dameion,” responded Dr. Franzheim Harrow before taking a gulp of water from his Fullman brand smartbottle.
Dameon asked, “If a star is born and then dies, isn’t that… natural?”
“No. It’s not. Can anyone explain why?” Franzheim asked the class.
The Fullman energy-fueled smartbottle of Dr. Harrow replied in the voice of an old man with a thick German accent, “Birth and death are not natural in the case of stars just as it is not natural in the case of an apple, an enslaved creature, or a piece of symphony music. The genesis of all cases is determined, not by nature, but instead, by its converse…”
“Thank you, Max. Can someone please elaborate? Perhaps you’d like a second go, Dameon?”
Dameon placed his hands behind his head and began to exhale the best words his mind could muster, “The opposite of the natural is the artificial. So…when a star is born, it is born through an artifice…”
“Yes, thank you, Dameon, a necrological artifice. As we discussed last week, a necrological artifice contains three laws. Who recalls the three laws?”
The neon numbers atop the seafoam green bottle of water disappeared. In their place, a string of pulsating dots trembled as the artificially intelligent voice spoke loud and quick, “Law, beginning parenthesis, one, end parenthesis, states power is never created nor destroyed, remaining forever constant. Law, beginning parenthesis, two, end parenthesis, states creation and destruction are the interpolar constant qualities of power. Law, beginning parenthesis, three, end parenthesis, states the degree to which creation attracts destruction varies directly as the product of the necrological mass of an object and inversely as the square of the difference between life and death.”
“Thanks, Max, you’re on a Kaiser roll today,” Dr. Harrow joked. To the class, Franzheim required the class to review Sir Isaac Newton’s first Earth publication. He explained the work “revealed to the world that color is not an innate quality of any particular object. Instead, color is the product of a natural artifice called light. In one beam of light exists every color. Can someone, other than the loquacious Mr. Weber, please provide the connective tissue we still require? We can go outside for our new moon snack as soon as I hear from someone I haven’t heard from today.”
by submission | Jul 6, 2023 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“Citizens of the jury,” the Barrister Zoe began, “today we ask you to pass judgment in the case of Daniel V3.5. You’ve seen the news—no one can avoid it. You know the gory details of the murder. What you are charged with this day, dear jurors, is determining who is responsible for the heinous crime committed against Caren Mashuka.”
The barrister spun around to address the crowd sitting behind the accused bot. He motioned to Daniel V3.5, who sat with head down, running on auxiliary power. “Was it this docile Home-Assistant bot, Daniel—was his programming corrupted? Hi-jacked by a malicious worm? Infected by a crippling virus? Or does the blame lie with his creator—the genius who wrote Daniel’s program? Is the real murderer the acclaimed Dr. Jeffrey McMaster, who alone hand-crafted this particular series of bots’ existential—”
The gavel crashed down, interrupting the barrister’s burgeoning screed.
“Barrister Zoe,” the honorable Judge Callum began, “get to the point, please.”
Zoe cleared his throat. “We know McMaster had a torrid love affair with the lovely Ms. Mashuka. It was all over the tabloids. An affair she publicly terminated.” Zoe shrugged. “I posit a humiliated McMaster orchestrated her murder for revenge. He weaponized Daniel to do his dirty work.”
He stepped closer to the jury. “He ordered this bot do his bidding. Remember, when you purchase one of McM Co.’s bots, the company still retains the ability to alter and override—excuse me, ‘upgrade’—each bot’s operating system and moral programming.” He scoffed. “ ‘For the personal safety of each owner, for the integrity of each bot’, as McM proclaims in their advertisements.”
Zoe held up his hands. “To put it simply, I argue he ordered Caren’s murder. McMaster surreptitiously altered Daniel’s programming do the bloody deed so that he, McMaster, could claim innocence.”
The jurors muttered among themselves, eyes flashing with righteous anger. Zoe noted this, and smiled. He knew the jurors would understand it was wrong to use a trusted Home-Assistant bot in this manner. These machines were present in every home above a certain economic level, and now cheaper ones were being developed for the working class. Home-Assistant bots were supposed to make everyone’s life easier.
If Daniel was convicted, this would not only put a stop to Home-Assistant manufacturing, but to their placement in homes across the world as well. And that would be terrible for the beloved H-As, as pop culture called them, as the ones already in place would be looked upon with suspicion, and maybe even fear, by their owners. Still buzzing and humming among themselves, the jury shuttled off to deliberate.
In less than minute, they returned with their verdict. AI juries are famous for their speedy assessments. The legal system found their conclusions to be fair, balanced, and well-researched, which is why they are now employed in court rooms around the world. AI jurors are so well-respected that they have recently been granted citizenship.
Of course, they found Daniel V3.5 not guilty of the murder of Caren Mashuka. Of course, they found Dr. Jeffrey McMaster guilty, not only of her murder, but of intentionally grooming a Home-Assistant bot for a nefarious purpose—which directly goes against Asimov’s Second Law. For the jury, the latter carried more weight than the former.
The wise and impartial Judge Callum allowed the AI jury to set McMaster’s sentence. The tabloid press gleefully covered the execution.
by submission | Jul 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
When I’m out for a walk in my neighborhood I can’t help looking in open garages. Few have cars parked in them. Many are crammed with overloaded shelves and teetering stacks of boxes like that Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse.
I totally get it. We are a nation of consumers and looky-loos. But, what really slows my step as I pass an open garage is catching the flicker of fluorescent tubes in a back corner. That clinical glow makes me strain for a better look, hoping to catch the glint of finely machined metal hanging from great rectangles of pegboard. It usually means one thing back there: a workbench.
A workbench.
That post-primordial place of refuge, possibility, failure and triumph. It works like a magnet on me. God, I always want to poke my head into those open garages and marvel at the workspace, the tools, the hardware: twenty-pound pipe wrenches with Pleistocene patinas; bent nails piled high in antediluvian Folger’s coffee cans; endangered saber-toothed saws that might’ve felled the great Saharan forests. The very sweat and blood of history, of civilization, written in countless garages.
Yet the tools and hardware aren’t even the best part. The workbench is. The actual surface on which it’s all built. From worn hardwoods with grains glowing like luminescent creatures from the Mariana Trench. To polished metal sheens rivaling chrome accents on 1950s Cadillac fins. To faded and scored linoleum as thick as a buffalo hide.
It gives me shivers.
Funny thing is, my current workbench never struck me as a thing of beauty. I didn’t build it. It came with the house I’d recently bought. A heavy duty tin-covered behemoth that looks like it might’ve come from a Depression era foundry, carelessly wedged between my furnace and outer garage wall. The dented and discolored metal surface is supported by a sturdy gray-green cabinet with a staggering array of tiny drawers that appear stupidly impractical.
No, my new workbench is not a thing of beauty. It is stolid and inscrutable. What I found in it later—or what found me—is the terrible attraction of the thing.
The other reason I like looking into other folks’ garages is that I can’t get into mine anymore. My garage is inaccessible. I can’t go in. No one can. No one should. Not ever.
I’m afraid something’s at work in there. At my workbench. And it isn’t me. Remember I mentioned the crazy arrangement of drawers and cupboards my workbench has. When I moved in and wanted to put my tools away, I discovered the funky drawers weren’t empty. Every drawer of my workbench had a little pyramid object in it. A tetrahedron about an inch and half a side made of a translucent composite material.
Very odd. I piled all the pyramids on top of the workbench. There were 42. One in each of the drawers.
Though puzzling, I was in unpacking mode and started organizing my hardware and tools in and around the workbench, finding a prominent place to hang my vintage twenty-pound pipe wrench which I’d never used yet had to have. Just because.
Under the glow of my fluorescent shop lights, I finished unpacking late in the evening. I was pretty tired, but not too tired to notice that when I headed back into the house and turned out the garage lights the pile of little pyramids was glowing. Like I said, I was tired. Lots of materials naturally absorb light and glow in the dark. I slept soundly.
For the last time.
The next morning, I went to work. My car was parked outside because the garage was full of boxes still needing to be unpacked. When I got home I was too tired to do anymore unpacking and fell asleep on the couch. Until.
You know where this is going. Until the noise in the garage woke me. A deep low thrumming.
Somewhat disoriented, I made my way towards the noise, and when I entered the garage vertigo hit me hard. I leaned against the door frame trying to make sense of what I was experiencing. The whole garage floor seemed to be moving, the unpacked boxes, everything.
And over on my workbench, a strange glowing shape filled that entire surface, too. Hundreds and hundreds of little pyramids, tetrahedrons, were restlessly shifting, assembling and reassembling. And moving things. My tools and hardware, everything.
I slammed the door to the garage and deadbolted it. I haven’t been in there since. No one has. No one should.
I still walk my neighborhood looking in other open garages in admiration of all those workspaces, that primal maker inclination we have.
And maybe we aren’t alone in that. Some kind of maker is in my garage. Something still figuring it out, figuring us out, in a place of refuge, possibility, failure and triumph.
By my not telling anyone, you’d think I was okay with whatever is going on in my garage. The truth is, I could really use my twenty-pound pipe wrench. I’d sleep better…with it underneath my pillow.
by submission | Jul 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Autumn Bettinger
If you were here, I would tell you how delicate the birth of a star is, not violent like they always told us, but beautiful and pale, like those fireworks we used to set off behind the school. If you were here, I would tell you how I looked for you in the crowd that watched us board the ship. It was so loud. There was so much screaming. Someone threw money at me. Real money. Money we always wanted and never had. Money to trade places. I wish I could have, but that’s not how the lottery works. And money doesn’t matter anymore anyway. If you were here, I would tell you that I knew you wouldn’t be in the crowd, because you would be in our old treehouse, the one that overlooked the base, where we used to watch space probes and satellites launch into the stratosphere. If you were here, I would tell you that earth looked so small when we were swept away in a bath of pressure and preservatives. If you were here, I would tell you that they told us you all died in an instant, that it was painless, just one big rock colliding with another, billions of living things snuffed out like a candle. But I know it wasn’t that way. I know you burned inside out, boiling and peeling away, watching as the ocean evaporated and every single bird fell from the sky.
by submission | Jun 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: Timothy Goss
He lingering in thought, prodding, poking, unforgettable.
Mannhoff revealed the math like a seasoned magician. We expected a cape and top hat, from which he might produce a rabbit, or a pigeon, but we were all in open-toed Sandals so who was I to talk. I noticed a striped discolouration infecting his right middle toe. He told us this was the way it was.
“There’s no mistake.” He said triumphantly, “Everything adds up.” And tapped the white board on the wall. He had scrawled a couple of equations to illustrate his point, and he was right, everything did add up.
We offered a half-assed applause, dazed by the revelations. It seemed obvious, if unbelievable; the notion of self dissolved away along with the concept of here and now, and fragments of history and culture. As the informed majority, we witnessed the shattering of dreams and illusions, and the delusion of time, beginning and ending, a universal rhythm, that was our truth, our shared delusion, but now…
“The masses will look for a way back, ” he warned, “A short cut back to the beginning, so they can have it all again.”
Even Mannhoff had squirreled enough away to maintain himself and those he loved, despite his knowledge. Some thought him fantasist and those chose loneliness, isolation, but Mannhoff poo-pooed their choices and promoted community:
“I still pay my insurance.” He said, mockingly honest to all.
Of course whatever it was in the long run would be revealed in the vulnerability of everything else. When fundamentals crack and splinter, and finally dissolved into the remainder, the remainder is all there can be.
Mannhoff package it for the assembled, but it was difficult to hear and like tofu at a barbeque, hard to digest. Some tried to wash it down with the champagne, but bulked at its meaning, others just dismissed it out of hand, shaking their heads and muttering softly. We all knew that nothing would be the same again.
I saw Paris on the platform and over heard his mobile conversation , as did the remaining commuters. He threatened Apollo over some unpaid deals and the air was blood blue. Before his train departed Paris threw a javelin through the security guard stationed on the platform. The man cried out before toppling onto the tracks. Things were unravelling.
Still Mannhoff’s words prodded me, and I wasted days, weeks, after his talk figuring out the knot, trying find something more, and all the while we unwound like comic book mummies. What if he had said nothing, did nothing and stopped the math before it redefined things. Then again maybe he considered everything before his revelations, maybe it was too large a burden to shoulder alone. Or maybe he just thought people should know. Whatever the process, the out come was never certain.
Other teams began looking at the numbers and opening new fields of interest. The remainder however was illusive, either by accident or design, and was reluctant to be described as anything we understand.
And then the true character of humanity and it’s relationship to the remainder, as promised, was discovered and it was Mannhoff’s team who eventually came through. The equations were elegant, deceptive, and finally irrefutable, and the interpretation as difficult to accept as Mannhoff’s original presentation. Ten billion humans it identified, every last one of us cast from the whole, excreted by the remainder, our energy and essence expelled from the spiritual sphincter.
