by submission | Apr 6, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
This is how I see it. The land mass is vast and the population is sparse. The people are scattered across it and the Settlements sprouted where something was still standing. Amongst the ruins of housing estates and of larger buildings; hospitals, schools and factories. They built up against the old walls and shored up the dilapidated and rickety structures, recycling what could be salvaged from the rubble.
Later, they improved on these early makeshift shelters building bigger and better and a hierarchy was quickly established based on one’s usefulness, abilities and skills. But once the Settlements had taken root and the heavy ground work had been done this hierarchy began to change and the Scholars took control.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know that what the Scholars did is important. They were the gatherers of our history. They quite literally instructed the people to go out and find it. To search for the literature, for the books and the newspapers and the magasines, for any scrap of paper with words printed or written on it. No matter how degraded or unreadable, the instructions were for the people to bring it back. The search was hard and time consuming. After all, the Alteration had consisted of much flooding and water and paper don’t mix; the one turns the other to mush.
But the people trekked far and wide and they did manage to search out all of the surviving literature and they brought it back and it was enough. And the Scholars put it in order, into sequence so that we wouldn’t forget how much people were capable of, how much they had achieved. The Scholars preach this is to what we should aspire, to keep on building bigger and better.
by submission | Apr 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The fire was burning low. Overhead the stars were a mighty river. Shrieks and howls threatened from the darkness beyond. The clan huddled nearer the flames seeking primitive protection. Talismans hung around their necks. Glittering things. Useless things.
The hunt had not gone well today. Nothing to cook on the fire. Nothing to feed their shrinking bellies. It had not always been like this. The clan had once prospered. Then, the clan had not feared the night. They had welcomed it. Reveled in their strength. Their dominion.
The clan couldn’t understand what had happened. How had they fallen so very low.
One clansman sat a bit apart from the others. He fingered the talisman around his neck as he mulled the clan’s plight. Their fall. He had once been their chief, directing many of his clansfolk. Building their greatness. Their prosperity. Their dominion.
But he had lost face. The clan blamed him. They said he should have foreseen their downfall. He’d been a chief. He claimed to know things. To know the world. How to keep their dominion. He should’ve known.
And he had known. And he was to blame. He’d studied the world. Knew its deepest mysteries. Its initial conditions.
Upon this understanding of initial conditions, he claimed the right to lead. In the chaos that was life, only a chief sensitive to initial conditions could map a path of dominion with certainty. That is what he’d done.
And it had worked. Prosperity. Dominion. Certainty.
Still, the fall had come. Battle. Fire. Famine. Plague.
It troubled the once-chief and his sensitivity to initial conditions. His clansfolk said he’d misled them. Had not spoken truth. But that was the initial condition: truth. He had always told his truth. His vision. He had led them there. Here.
One of his clansfolk yelled for him to feed the fire. That was his task now. To keep the fire burning. To keep the threats of night away.
When he’d been chief there was almost no night. The cities, the streets, every corner of the land glowed with their dominion. Until it went dark. As it had to. Because the once-chief was wrong. Had always been. The initial condition he’d built the clan’s dominion on was not truth. Otherwise this darkness would not have come.
The once-chief clasped his talisman of shiny fobs, offered a prayer to his silicon gods, and darted into the darkness for fuel to stoke the fire.
A few minutes later he returned, grimy and winded, carrying a heavy load. His clansfolk made room for him. He heaved the tires from the autonomous vehicle onto the ones that had burned low in sizzling toxicity. Thick, acrid smoke belched as the new tires flared and sputtered.
His clansfolk pushed him back from the miasmic light and heat. But the once-chief leaned into the choking smoke obscuring the stars. He watched as ragged moths, strange attractors, flocked to the sickly light, until they dropped from the crippling smoke, their wings beating erratically, each dying beat influencing unseen currents of air, somehow creating ripples that could change the course of history somewhere in the universe.
But not here, the once-chief thought.
For he knew the initial condition of this world was not truth. It was greed.
by submission | Apr 4, 2023 | Story |
Author: Sarah Klein
Paul put on some jazz music as he set up the Webcam. He was pumped. After weeks of boredom, the Doppelganger program had launched. It was a steep fee to be included, but they were essentially cloning you, with some proprietary software that was supposed to mimic your brain too. Plus, he and his friends were too wealthy for it to even be a second thought. The first week had been great, and it was his turn to host. He shimmied his hips to the music as he set out the cheese plate.
The doorbell rang. It was Cindy. “Hey baby!” He said, giving her a peck on the cheek, and running his hand down her tight red dress. She giggled. “Beer’s in the fridge, wine is on the counter, I’m just setting up the hors d’oeuvres.” He ran back into the kitchen while Cindy settled herself on the couch.
A minute later the door went again, and Cindy yelled “I got it!” Mike, Steve and Jenna piled in together raucously. After some hubbub, they finally all sat down, and Paul hit “Launch” on the program.
“This wine is fantastic,” Steve said, and Jenna made a noise to agree, her mouth full of crackers. They all took turns holding their thumbs to the biometric scanner and sat back to watch.
They were all at a big party, with a bunch of other doppelgangers. They took turns zooming in on each other and eagerly gossiped. “Wow, Jenna, your boss really does not want to leave you alone,” Mike observed. Jenna put her head in her hands. “God, I know! I put in my two weeks, Steve and I have more than enough so it’s fine, but what a creep!” Steve put his arm around her.
“Ooh, Steve and Cindy are going off somewhere together,” Paul crooned. Internally, though, his guts twisted. Cindy giggled and sipped her wine. They all craned their heads in and Mike hit commands to zoom and follow them.
The jeering continued as the couple entered the spare room. But silence struck abruptly as the Cindy and Steve doppelgangers began to passionately kiss. Paul coughed and tried to steady himself. The doppelgangers started to undress each other. They watched, rapt, until Steve went to caress Cindy’s naked body, and Paul yanked the webcam out of the computer. He looked up at Cindy. Her face was bright red. He looked over at Steve, who looked pale and uncomfortable.
“What the fuck,” Paul said. It came out too loud.
“We were watching that,” said Mike, but he was ignored.
Steve looked at Paul and shrugged, holding his hands palms up. “I don’t know, man, it’s just like, dolls. I’m not touching your girl, man. Not me.” He jammed his thumb into his chest for emphasis.
“You want to,” Paul said, and looked over at Cindy, who was silent and still. “Cindy? I’m not enough for you, huh, babe?” Cindy began to sniffle, and held her hands to her face.
“Cut it out,” Jenna yelled. Paul shot back, “it’s based on US, dummies! The behavior is based on us!”
“Come on man,” Mike said evenly, “it’s probably crap software and like, human desire translates to it weird, or like, we all wanna fuck everybody.” But Paul wasn’t listening.
“You piece of shit,” he screamed, as he lunged for Steve’s throat. Cindy wailed. Mike and Jenna tried to restrain Paul.
The phone rang at the police department. “I swear to God, if this is some doppelganger shit again, I’m not sending a car. Fucking ridiculous,” the sergeant said, picking up the phone.
by submission | Apr 2, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Earth Two went missing. You’d think the reaction would have been shock and awe. It was more like “shucks” and “aaah.”
Generally, the Sol populace exhibited a collective disinterest. The exo-insurers decidedly did not, and I was called in. Planets did go missing. Usually, not ones as high profile as Earth Two, but when identifying and cataloging worlds on the close-to-curdling reaches of the Milky Way, funky stuff happened: supernovas, planetary collisions, gamma ray bursts, wave function collapses, accounting blunders.
As an interplanetary pencil pusher, I had to deal with the finer points of Earth Two being a corporate “rounding error.” When I dug into the case, it became crystal clear that someone had cleverly muddied the waters to make them appear deep. Major tomfoolery was afoot,
What I mean by that is Earth Two never seems to have existed at all. For over two centuries, some entity had inserted bogus interstellar surveying data into the galactic archive and somehow corrupted the cosmic ledger, backfilling the blockchain with convoluted legalities that read like the devil’s own End User Licensing Agreement.
A real cluster. Maybe not Virgo Supercluster-sized, but still a monumental mess to sort out. Luckily and literally, I had time on my side. The inside pocket of my jacket held a freejacked chrono-dowser. This was not strictly legal, but it was certainly efficient when tracking down anomalous activity far in the past, and my ever-tyrannical boss, Amalee La Terre, favored efficacy over ethics.
Through some closely guarded quantum divination, the device could hone in on inflection points in the past. In essence, the chrono-dowser could rewind time.
With a few critical caveats: Rewind Only–no spying into the future, only the past was in play. Read Only–no physically traveling back in time, only peeking into the past. Sheer Events Only–no retro-stalking or prurient pursuits, only past incidents severely rattling spacetime and creating massive branching in cosmic timelines were locatable.
But probably the most important thing to know about the chrono-dowser: it was unfailingly ironic.
Think I’m kidding?
Okay. Here’s where the Earth Two investigation led me: to the small town of Bend, Oregon, USA on March 7, 2019.
Why there and then?
On that day, Earth Two was both saved and doomed, because the last Blockbuster Video store in existence sold a very battered VCR tape of a way-below B-movie. A low budget clunker of a sci-fi flick about humanity screwing up our world and having to colonize a newly discovered exoplanet to survive.
The title: Earth Two.
A super forgettable film. Except to the kid that bought that old videotape. A kid who still used a VCR player. A kid who dreamed and eventually schemed cosmic things. A kid whose great great granddaughter became Amalee La Terre, the current presidium of Magellan Enterprises, the largest exoplanetary expediter in the galaxy. My boss.
In my jacket pocket, on my chrono-dowser, I had all the evidence I needed to expose the juiciest real estate scam in galactic history and lay low the biggest corporation in the cosmos.
So, why did I hesitate?
On that day of March 7, 2019 in that very last Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon, you should’ve seen the look on that kid’s face holding that ancient videotape with the lame title and cheesy sci-fi graphics. You should’ve seen that kid’s eyes light up with possibilities. It was like being at the very start of creation. A Big Bang moment. That kid held the future in his hands and in a very real sense did discover Earth Two.
Who was I to take that away from any of us?
Be kind. Sometimes, don’t rewind.
by submission | Apr 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
“There is pain when functional activity is insufficient, but excessive activity produces the same effect.” -Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor In Society
Jerrold Davis Ph.D. (c) had a problem. He was such an astute student that he had assimilated the language of his discipline of sociology to the point that he no longer could speak in words and phrases of his own making.
Ever since Davis had begun his journey to become a professional sociologist, he had worked to master the language, the lingo of his field. He parroted the things his professors said, and he could recite, chapter and verse, the works of masters like Durkheim, Parsons, Weber, Marx, and more recent luminaries like Skocpol. Davis dazzled his professors by making his points in ways they would make. He was such a good student that he earned several A+ grades in his course work and passed his comprehensive exams (comps) with distinction. Everyone said Davis had a brilliant career ahead of him. All he needed to do was produce articles for publication in academic journals, and he would be assured a postdoctoral fellowship (a “post doc”). No one doubted that his dissertation would be brilliant.
But then something happened Davis could not explain. And when I say could not explain, he literally could not explain it.
One morning, two weeks after Davis defended his dissertation proposal, he woke up unable to speak. When a roommate asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee, Davis could not respond. He was mute. Davis had to nod vigorously so his roommate would hand him a cup. His entire morning was like this, having to pantomime his intentions. That is until he arrived at the Sociology Department where, much to his relief, he found he could again speak.
“Jerrold, here is a copy of your proposal with your advisor’s notes,” one of the secretaries told him.
“________________________________________. ________________________. _____, _________.” Davis replied.
“What?” the secretary asked.
“______________. ______,_____. _____! ___.”
She shook her head, unable to make sense of what Davis had said. In fact, he had been quoting from White Collar by C. Wright Mills. But since that work is copyright protected, I cannot repeat it here.
Davis left the main office and walked to the Teaching Assistant cubicles down the hall. Instead of asking himself why the secretary couldn’t understand him and settling on the answer that she didn’t know her Mills, he told himself, “_______________________. _____,________;_________;________________._____;_____________;________________;____________;__________,” which was a passage from Weber’s essay, “Bureaucracy.”
In the office, a peer congratulated Davis on the success of his dissertation proposal. Davis responded by quoting Marx on “each according to his ability” rather than simply saying, “Thank you.” The grad student shook his head and thought again that Davis “couldn’t ever turn it off.’”
By now, Davis was growing concerned. When he tried to ask a question of someone, even a simple question like, “Does anyone want coffee?” he would quote from an article on food deserts in major urban centers. Increasingly desperate, he tried to use dialogue from some of the pulp detective novels he read in his spare time. But it was impossible to do this. All Davis could do was speak in a sociological language.
To get through the day, Davis tried composing a note explaining that he had laryngitis and had lost his voice. But when he tried to write this on paper, he could not. Davis could not print the pronoun I. What he could do was reproduce a passage from Kevin White’s An Introduction to the Sociology of Health and Illness, 3rd edition. For the first time in his life, Davis could not speak up.
He shouted,“____________,_______________” from The Division of
Labor in Society by Durkheim. What he had meant to say was the word “shit,” but his voice would not allow it. No sociologist he had read had used that expletive in their writings.
Still, Davis had a reason for hope. He had just downloaded an AI App for his phone and asked it what he could do to speak to his colleagues. The App suggested using a speech-to-text device, but Davis had to tell the App this would not work because laryngitis had cost him his voice. The App said he should see a doctor, but if he lacked health insurance, he might consult a friend who could speak for him by reading messages that Davis wrote on a tablet. In disgust, Davis closed the App. He tried typing his thoughts into a text-to-speech program, but once again, he could only put down the words of others. Desperate, Davis decided the only option left was to see his dissertation advisor and somehow get him to say things that Davis could repeat. If he could get the man to say, “I have lost my voice. Please provide guesses as to what my needs are from my body language,” then Davis might be able to have someone assist him with his condition. But when he went to his advisor’s office, it was vacant even though his advisor was supposed to be there for office hours. Davis sat and waited in vain all afternoon.
On his way home, a mugger accosted Davis. The man pulled a knife and demanded his wallet. Davis had left home with nothing but his keys and some loose change but could not explain this to the mugger. He did not bother trying to speak. The only thing Davis could do was turn out his pockets to show his poverty. But when he reached into them, the mugger assumed he was going for a weapon, so he stabbed him.
Davis fell to the sidewalk, bleeding from his stomach. The mugger searched him and, finding nothing, ran off. Davis tried calling out for help, but the only thing he could muster was, Au Secour! Au Secour! Because it had appeared in a French article on social determinants of health. But Davis did not live in a French-speaking neighborhood, so he lay on the pavement experiencing an increasing loss of consciousness for which he had no words.
