by submission | Mar 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
It is a room inside the mountain-sized Jirt lander, itself tiny compared to their vast craft in orbit.
Franklin sits at a glassy table, on a frail glassy chair, in a cold, translucent space curved like an egg. He has laid out his fountain pen and a folder.
He discovers the table rocks on uneven legs.
Time passes.
>You paid for questions, says a voice.
Franklin jumps and hurries to open the folder. The first of the questions concerns free will.
>It depends on what you mean by have, will, free, and mean…
Franklin’s university was venerable but poor, unable to afford shiny Jirt science. But it had a benefactor in the Milburn Foundation which offered the Milburn Prize for Progress in Philosophy. A quantity of the rare-earth element erbium was paying for this conversation.
Dr Franklin was a compromise between the Regis Chair of Philosophy and the Lady Hall Professor of Ethics. Answers to any of their conundrums would keep the subject limping along for another generation.
“For a price,” he interrupts. “I’ll share my theory about your dealings with humanity.”
>What price?
The Jirt put a price on everything. It was the most human thing about them.
“We get to chat.”
>What about your philosophical problems?
“I’ll make something up.”
>Refreshing.
“This table. Do many shove folded paper under one leg? Like those Germans in here before?”
>Oh yes.
Franklin shakes his head.
>What is this theory of yours?
“You claim to value erbium, but you don’t.”
Franklin jots a note, then idly rocks the table backwards and forwards.
Wise economists had warned it was a trapper economy, humanity swapping beaver pelts for trinkets. We were eager for their abstract mathematics, cosmological insights and incomprehensible artefacts. The problem was the extinction of the beaver— reserves of erbium dwindled.
>Your species puts a price on everything.
“But why erbium?”
>Some suggested tigers instead. Still, it is not clear what you gain from knowing this.
Franklin smiles wanly. “I’m not talking to a Jirt at all am I?”
>Think of us as staff.
“At school, I was the butt of practical jokes. I was a figure of fun. So I kept my mouth shut. I imagined it was a dignified silence.”
>And the relevance of this?
“Our governments might not play your games if they knew.”
>Without proof, we could deny everything.
Franklin holds up his beautifully handwritten note:
Proof
Denial
Accident
>Yes, you might have an accident.
“Though you can’t know who I’ve told.”
>There is another option.
Franklin seemed not to hear. “And is erbium another of your private jokes?”
>Essential in the commonest interstellar engine. Mining it out reduces the long term competition.
“Should I worry you’ve told me that?”
The room lurches and Franklin’s pen falls to the floor..
>We’ll soon be in orbit. The only win-win strategy is your collaboration. What would you want in return? Gold? Reproductive success? Tigers?
“There is a name for a bargain like that.”
>Many problems in your folder evaporate in the light of knowledge you lack.
“I would like that knowledge,” admits Franklin. “Why do the Jirt treat us like this?”
>They barely know we have stopped. They are a lofty race. Think of this as the staff’s afternoon off.
“I’d be betraying my kind.”
>You would start as cabin boy. I’m afraid it would mean immortality and a higher IQ.
Franklin seems to be struggling to decide, but it was only the last stand of his conscience.
He sighs. “Throw in the tigers and it’s a deal.”
by submission | Mar 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: Tim Love
Once we’d enhanced the Quantum stabilisation fields, our biggest hurdle to implementing Shrődinger’s cat experiment was more ethical than technical so we temporarily relocated. To bracket the data we brought along Pavlov’s dog and lab rats, bypassing quarantine.
When we determined that saliva did and didn’t drip, that stress did and didn’t improve memory, and that we were and weren’t in Guantanamo Bay, the Cheshire cat grinned. We thought that would be proof enough so we let it out of the bag, but before we could swing it, it got our tongue.
“What next?” it said, profiting from our silence. “What earthly use is a Quantum computer with one qbit, dead or alive? You’ve got no guts. Think outside the box. Imagine you could use all the quantum states in the universe. What would it be able to calculate? I’ll tell you – its own next moment. It’s no more than an analogue simulation of itself. That’s the meaning of the universe, its high concept. Watch.”
And with that, it disappeared, grin and all. We remained speechless even so. Would we get our Nobel? Or not? We needed repeatability, copy-cat action at a distance to justify our means – Siam, Persia, even the Isle of Man would have sufficed. But some things aren’t meant to be. Between the dog and the rats there was now an excluded middle. Had our very curiosity killed our subject? Should we just have ignored it as if it were a naughty child whose behaviour we wanted to correct? In any case, could cats be trained? There was no shortage of volunteers to search online for an answer, for hidden variables. Feline screensavers began to fill the lab as if the disappearance of the original caused many smaller ones to appear, each with a cute name.
Predictably, when the project leader announced that the fat-cats had withdrawn our funding, nobody had kittens.
by submission | Mar 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Philip G Hostetler
Xanta Truz County is well known for vortexes and psychedelic eddies. Some say there’s a social black hole effect where all the locals there are pulled by a metaphysical critical mass, a repelling pushing and compelling pulling, forced us apart and pulled us all back together again. The wavelengths vary, as they do in all atmospheric climates, but this one in particular is full of pyscho-microclimates, the sort where you could be by the opalescent seas of mindfulness and twenty minute later, hanging from the desolate peaks of happy insanity. Y’see they won’t tell you when you go crazy, if they love you for it.
The glitz and glam of kitschy tourist traps selling you digicards of Five Tailed Norback Whales breaching through acid seas means very little compared to the holding of hands and witnessing them splash through that technicolor ocean. I’ll never forget her gasp of exhilaration, denoting what we were all feeling around that obsidian beach bonfire that night. Maggie was quite a woman, who’s traits for goodness still elude me, though I remain inspired to this day.
But the grind, the service to the depraved, hoping to catch a glimpse of what we’ve all known, and perhaps, have taken for granted. For if you’ve known a mad paradise for life, you’d be confused by those coming from a mundane hell. Seeing Sparrowed Monarchs hatch from their leather cocoons for the very first time, was an afternoon stroll for us, but the avian-entomological experience of a lifetime for the rare enthusiast from sullen, distant shores. But Maggie and I left, knowing that there was a profound magic to be had in going out into that mundane hell, and so we did. We separated though, until we met Dr. Maxell, quite separately, who said not only could he match us up across light years of estrangement, but that he could send us to where the stars didn’t shine, that at best moonlight could be contained and sent with us on our… journey, a journey that would be told in reverse-time.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Dr. Maxell was a terrible man, though a terrible man with fancy technics and gobs of money, all of physics, theoretical or otherwise, seemed to fit in his pocket protected breast pocket. When he wrote with his pen upon microcosmic canvas, galaxies opened and invited us in, but Maggie and I, we made their orbits eccentric, changed the very path they were naturally traveling by. Be it a by micrometer or lightyear, it was enough to render whole galaxies unfit for life, just so we could have a glance.
I was reminded of those tourists that came to Xanta Truz, and I felt a sort of shame, that I’d become much, much worse. As now perhaps billions, trillions of lifeforms would never be. Perhaps that’s why Maggie went spelunking into those black holes. To compress so severely, that she’d never have to look back again.
I still see her in that moonlight she kept bottled up, I still hear her dancing to “Under the Silkyway Tonight”, though she never danced much really, at least not with her feet.
Maggie, where have you gone, and could it be told in story? Would we even be worthy? Or has Dr. Maxell made fools of us all… So foolishly playing at love and half-life, of relative time and particle/wave confusion. Who knows, least of all, me.
by submission | Mar 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
The window cracked, then broke, allowing a tendril of dust to slither in, covering everything in its narrow path with a fine coating. We wiped it up, patched the oval window with a metal plate soldered in place. Reassuring each other it was repaired, we crawled into our bunks and slept.
When we woke, console lights across our pod blinked weakly under a thin blanket of red dust. Overhead, the skylight leaked a fine shower, and the dust poured down, swirling in the currents of the air conditioner, spreading far and wide across our prefabricated unit. It took us hours to clean up.
The dust was everywhere, filling crevices between keys on keyboards, gluing gears, piling up in empty cups and test tubes, shaping tiny pyramids in every corner imaginable. We ourselves weren’t immune: it gathered in our ears, eyes, noses, mouths. Eating, all foodstuffs now carried grit crunching between our teeth. Showers turned the dust to a sticky red muck, which slid down our bodies, clotted the drain at our feet. This created yet another pressing job; we couldn’t allow the red mud to clog our pipes.
Constant clean up was exhausting, distracting us from our real work. Entire days devoted to patching and cleaning, disposing and sanitizing. Searching, searching for new cracks, inside and out—sometimes finding, often not. The dust continued to find its way in.
Even our EVA suits weren’t immune. Stored in sealed closets, somehow the red dust fingered its way in. Coarse minuscule crystals were sharp enough to tear tiny holes in the fabric, rendering the protective gear useless. We patched the suits as best we could. For two team members, that wasn’t good enough. Going outside the pod on recon and repair, we lost them.
Fine as baby powder—just as sweet smelling—the red dust rose in every aspect of our existence, until we were smothering in its soft avalanche. We who remained, gave in, gave up.
When the next expedition landed, they quickly located our pod. Inside, shin deep in red dust, the new crew prowled and poked until they found us, buried beneath a thick layer of powder. Our jumpsuits worn away, our flesh abraded to nothing. Our skulls, polished by the dust and now gleaming like crystals, flashed like unheeded warning beacons beneath the side-lights of the new crew’s helmets—as the red dust continued its inexorable rise.
by submission | Mar 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: Hannah Caroline Wayne
Vika was bopping down the sidewalk, holographic music blending seamlessly with reality. The street was empty, a marvel in a city so large, as she danced with the holo-girls, smiling and singing along with the synthesized melody. Her cutoff jacket bounced off of her; her loose hair flopped about. Several of the people watching her from their broken windows were jealous of her infectious smile. More than one lecher eyed her with mouth agape.
Vika was oblivious to it all. The concert would continue until she stopped it. It was the latest release by FTF: an artificial DJ that fit on a micro-drive the size of her pinky nail. It cost her almost two week’s pay, but it would keep her occupied forever; or until the next algorithm-based concert dropped. Whichever came first.
But as the music climbed toward a bass-drop, it stopped. She was ripped from her concert and plopped into the mundanity of the augmented street, jolting her as she danced with a sign post. Vika removed her AR glasses and examined them. Tiny cracks spiderwebbed their way down one of the glasses’ temples. She sighed, folded them up, and slipped them into a secure pocket. She returned her eyes to the street, a smile creeping back. It started in the eyes and worked its way down until she radiated positivity once again. She started singing a tune in her head and those still watching her could swear they could hear it too, unconscious smiles on their faces.
