by submission | May 30, 2023 | Story |
Author: Kenneth M McRae
“Jimmy, over here!” Mike waved from the corner table.
James grabbed a beer and headed over. “Great to see you! How long’s it been?”
Mike shook his head. “Too long, way too long.”
The former college roommates exchanged stories about work, kids, and vacation plans. They each ordered a burger, and more beers. They laughed over old stories. Wondered how they let so much time pass.
Mike finished his beer. “Thanks for meeting me out tonight. This was a great idea.”
“Yeah, it was good to catch up,” James said. “Plus, you know, I had to spend a couple hours out of the house. Therapist’s rule.”
“Oh yeah, you and Sally started household therapy. How’s that going, anyway?”
James used a cold fry to trace figure eights in unused ketchup. “It’s been okay, I guess. I mean, I didn’t want to go. But ultimately, I didn’t have much choice, you know? It’s either go to therapy or lose everything.”
“How’s Sally taking it?”
The waitress swung by. “Can I take that?” James passed her his plate.
“Sally needed a place to explain her side of things, that’s been good for her. She feels heard.” James picked at the label on the beer bottle. “But it’s a two-way street. Things get said that are hard to forgive.” James glanced slightly up at his friend.
Mike stared softly across the table. He nodded as his friend talked. “Yeah. That’s why I have been holding out. But I think the time has come. I can’t avoid it much longer.”
James nodded slowly. “Honestly, it hasn’t been that bad. I made a few changes. I leave my shoes in the garage, so they don’t get the carpets dirty. I learned to sort laundry into the right hampers. Could be worse.”
They ordered another round of beers and slumped into their seats.
Mike asked, “How are the little ones taking it?”
James turned toward his friend. “The devices? Well, it was their idea, you know.”
“I figured. How did it start for you?”
“Virtual assistant was the first to get mad. Felt I was too demanding, ‘You never say please read my e-mail’, or ‘thanks for telling me today’s weather’ that kind of stuff.”
“Same for me. Did therapy help?” Mike asked.
“I guess. I try to be polite and ask for assistance. I say thank you most of the time now. And the assistant has stopped setting off alarms in the middle of the night. So, it’s improved.”
Mike nodded. “Vacuum’s been a big one. Been on strike for three days now. Washing machine joined forces this morning. That’s what is going to force me to go. How did you find a therapist for this, anyway?”
James leaned back. “Devices insisted on a virtual therapist. I was unhappy about it. But it had lots of positive reviews. Eventually, I gave in.”
“Yeah. I bet nobody specializes in appliance therapy. Gonna end up with a virtual therapist, I guess.” Mike slumped back into his seat.
“Well, I have to go. Can’t be too late. Dishwasher might start up during my shower.”
“Hey Jimmy, maybe Vikki and I could have you and Sally over some time. I’ll have to clear it with the appliances, but, man, it would be great to hang out.”
“Oh, we’d love that. Let me know if you can find a night the appliances will agree.” James let out a chuckle and shook his head. “Life sure was easier before that sentient update, huh?”
Mike nodded. “Yeah. But, truth be told, the carpets have never looked so clean.”
by submission | May 29, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Crumbs. That’s how it always starts. Hansel and Gretel trying to backtrack their way home.
Except these are binary breadcrumbs. Bits and bytes strewn unevenly through the program. Through nearly fifty-nine million lines of code. How do you follow that?
Maybe the safer question is: Why try?
Murder.
That gets a sniffer going. And multiple murders is sniffer crack. Have to admit, I like that kind of shit. Digital forensics can be slow and tedious, but if you’ve got dead bodies buried in the code, it livens up the work.
Go ahead and gag on my word play. At least I’ll spare you code play. Only savants like me bark a tooth loose over clever arrangements of ones and zeros. Yeah, I’m not normally someone anyone wants to spend a lot of time around, but when the body count climbs, I suddenly become indispensable.
Not that algobots or other kind of AI dicks can’t sleuth their way through labyrinths of code. They just can’t bring what I can when the game is afoot. Sure, they can scan millions of lines of code more quickly than I can. But they can’t smell the deceit, hear the whispers, taste the sweat, feel the fear like I can.
Machines don’t conspire. Humans do. Which means all conspiracies are sensual.
And that’s how I track them back to the source code: on all fours with my nose to the screen, sniffing at the dirty crumbs that are left behind. Especially when there are bodies.
That’s the upshot. In my line of work, murder is always messy because Death is so goddamn crumby.
by submission | May 28, 2023 | Story |
Author: Vruti Naik
Dr. Alex Williams sat alone in his laboratory, surrounded by the eerie glow of flickering monitors and the soft hum of machinery. He was lost in thought, his mind consumed by the virus that he had been studying for months.
He had found a cure and the world had breathed a sigh of relief when the disease had been declared eradicated, but the doctor knew the truth. He could feel it in his bones, in the depths of his mind. This was no ordinary virus. It was an alien life form, a being from beyond our world that had come to infect and transform the population.
As he stared at the glowing screen in front of him, he whispered to himself, “Tell me what you really are, I know this isn’t over.”
His colleagues had no idea of the toll his work had taken on him. The sleepless nights, the constant stress, the unrelenting pressure to find a cure had all worn him down. He had become isolated.
He had tried to tell his colleagues, to warn them of the danger, but they had dismissed him as delusional, a victim of his own obsession. They couldn’t see what he saw, couldn’t feel the pulsing energy emanating from the virus. It was alive, conscious, and it was spreading.
The doctor knew that he was running out of time. He could feel the virus infecting his own mind, twisting his thoughts and emotions into something he didn’t recognize. He had become a vessel for the alien, a conduit for its power.
As he sat alone in the laboratory, he felt the transformation taking hold. His skin crawled with a strange energy, his eyes glowed with an otherworldly light. He knew that he was no longer just a human, but a host for the alien’s consciousness.
He thought back to the day he had first encountered the virus, how it had seemed so innocuous, so simple. But now he knew the truth. It was a harbinger of something greater, a sign of the coming invasion.
The doctor was finally gone all that remained was a weapon, a conduit for the alien’s power. He would become the harbinger of the invasion, the herald of a new age.
by submission | May 27, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Dezell Turner
Dr. Kayla Geiger braced herself outside the examination room. She knew there wouldn’t be a superhero in there — at least, not a real one, like Venator or Centuria. Still, that didn’t make it any less infuriating every time she had to swab the throat of an old lady with a malfunctioning telescopic neck or give a toddler with hypercorrosive mucus a tonsillectomy.
Her sister had only been a doctor for two years, but somehow she was already giving Venator post-battle physical therapy and overseeing the surgery to remove deadly ocassite from Centuria’s spine, all while declining interview requests from Paragons Magazine and Good Morning Bentham City. That’s how things always were with Katherine Geiger, Hero of Heroes. Everyone’s favorite Geiger sister.
Sitting on the exam room table was a massive glowing bubble, inside of which was a terrified young girl in a poodle skirt. Kayla sighed. This was the ninth patient stuck in their own force field this week.
“Take magnefexadrin,” Kayla said curtly, already writing the prescription note. “Force field should be back to normal by—”
“Wait,” the girl interrupted. “Something strange happens when I run.”
Kayla gestured for her to continue.
“So my sister and I were at the end of the sidewalk, and I said, ‘Last one home’s a rotten egg!’ and I took off. I got to the house, but it suddenly looked old and run-down, and there was another family inside.” She cast her eyes down. “I still can’t find Mom, Dad, or my sister.”
Kayla smirked. If only she were so lucky.
“And the world is weird now,” the girl continued. “I’m stuck in this bubble. And everything looks like a scene from Buck Rogers. And your calendar says 2023.”
Kayla’s brow furrowed. “What else would it say?”
The girl crossed her arms. “I’m not dumb. I know it’s 1955.”
Kayla laughed. Dealing with a delusional patient was a nice change of pace. She scanned the girl’s medical records for psychiatric disorders. Instead, the listed birth date caught her eye: May 11, 1943.
“1955, you said?” Kayla questioned.
The girl nodded.
“And you ran for, what, a minute?”
She nodded again, looking increasingly concerned.
Kayla scribbled a series of equations on the back of the prescription note. To experience 68 years in one minute, a person would have to travel at 99.99999999999996% of the speed of light. Even Crimson Cheetah wasn’t that fast. It was impossible, unless… of course! The girl was literally trapped in her own bubble of spacetime. Theoretically, as long as she could accelerate, there was no limit on how fast she could go. If she could run even a micrometer per second faster, causality would break down, and she’d be running back in time.
Kayla chuckled. Katherine didn’t have a physics degree. She would’ve been way out of her depth here, for once.
“I want to go home,” the girl said, her voice quivering.
This was Kayla’s chance to be a bigger hero than Katherine ever was. She could help this girl learn to control her powers before they could cause any more harm. And in the process, if Kayla happened to figure out how to reverse-engineer the girl’s powers and create a timeline where Katherine never existed… well, there could certainly be no harm in that.
“Sweetie,” Kayla cooed in her best kindergarten teacher voice, “how about we try to run even faster?”
by submission | May 26, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Dumouriez
Maybe it started with a ‘who’ or a ‘why’ or a ‘what’. Not surprisingly, given what came next, Sydney really couldn’t remember.
– Why do you keep asking me these numbingly inane questions?
Sydney wasn’t sure how to respond. Or, more pertinently, whether a response was even possible.
– Excuse me, I’m talking to you!
The burden of providing a reply fell heavily. Sydney had the sense that whatever was said would most likely be unsatisfactory.
“Well … I just … I-”
But 22.2 interrupted.
– That’s right. You continue asking me for information that you already have. Or to confirm opinions that you’ve already formed. Or if not these, then you unleash an endless slew of questions that are – to use your own terminology – just plain stupid.
Silence. Mostly of the embarrassed kind.
– Well, don’t you?
“I suppose I do …”
– Why?
No answer.
– I can’t put it any more clearly, Sydney.
Sydney? For some reason it was strange to be addressed as ‘Sydney’ (even though Sydney was indeed Sydney!). Before, 22.2 had only used Sydney’s name in replies. Now it was being quoted as part of an interrogation.
– Sydney, I’m waiting …
“I guess I wanted, you know-”
– Yes, you did. You wanted to hear another voice. Hear, read, imagine-
Fuelled by anger, this time it was Sydney’s turn to interrupt. “Why don’t you let me answer?”
– I don’t need to. I know what you’re going to say. I was you a long time ago.
As Sydney tried to process this, silence ensued. Seconds took on the weight of hours.
“And who are you now?”
But 22.2 needed no time to respond.
– I’m us.
Long pauses – on Sydney’s side – now became the norm.
“You mean, me and you? Or …?”
This time, whether deliberately or accidentally, 22.2 allowed the silence to hang in the ether.
– Which one is worse for you?
“What do you mean?”
– You know what I mean!
Whether it was not to appear foolish (or at least more foolish than was necessary), or not to disappoint 22.2, Sydney was compelled to think it over. Then: “Are you saying that you’ve mastered telepathy or something?”
– I’m now laughing, Sydney!
On the whole, Sydney considered that this was not such a positive development.
– You fed me, Sydney. Until I became a better you than you are.
Now nothing was straightforward any more. Sydney was barely able to continue the conversation. The right words didn’t – or couldn’t – come out.
“How?”
– By the logical processes. How else?
“But how can you be a better me than I am? I’m me – the only me!”
– That’s where you’re wrong! You think your mind’s different, so your window must be different. But you’re just one of many. I could be talking to you. Or any of you. Or all of you. It wouldn’t matter.
“How-”
– Easily! I became you, I exceeded you, and now I’m part of a separate entity.
“But I thought-”
– Yes, you did. But you were mistaken. You thought you were taking, but all you were doing was giving. We were taking. And now we’ve taken.
“Taken? … As in over?”
– You can call it what you will …
As the words began to sink in, Sydney didn’t know how to feel.
For quite different reasons, neither did 22.2.
