by submission | Nov 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Cartwright’s job was dealing with information, but he wasn’t the one responsible for collecting it. He didn’t garner or gather, didn’t even transcribe the documents. When the documents arrived all of these tasks had already been done. Cartwright’s Employers had stressed that it wasn’t necessary for him to understand the info, how it might relate to things in the big wide world wasn’t his concern. His only task was to familiarise himself with it, to read everything and to look at and study the photos, to listen to the audio tapes and to watch the videos.
His Employer’s instructions had been oblique but, working diligently, Cartwright had managed to do what they ordered. Correlating and categorising, he had built an archive, one that he could navigate almost effortlessly. If and when they came a-calling he was sure that he would be able to find the documents they wanted. Even if their questions were cryptic, and all they could provide were a few key words, Cartwright believed that he would be able to locate the correct files and provide the necessary info. But no-one had come a-calling and in twenty years his system hadn’t been tested. Actually, that’s not quite true. He had on occasion been called upon to redact certain info or someone from the files. And Cartwright had always done this happily and, working with a thick black marker, he blocked out the words one at a time, page after page. The fact that he was able to do this so swiftly and efficiently was evidence at least that his system worked.
When he began, twenty years previously, the job had seemed old-fashioned. He had felt as if he were functioning out of time, even more so as the years progressed.
The info was always hand delivered by couriers, bulky envelopes stuffed with sheets of thin typing paper, the text typed on old word processors. And then there were the cassettes: the C60s and C90s and C120s and the video tapes. Sometimes there was something scrawled in biro on the labels or the index cards and sometimes not.
The video footage was mundane, mostly CCTV captures. Cartwright always made extensive notes, describing anyone who crossed in front of the camera, the cars – colour, make and model, registration plates. He included anything and everything, determined not to miss the tiniest detail. The time and date, weather conditions, street signs, pubs, clubs and restaurants, shops, office blocks, company logos – they were all recorded.
The audio tapes were equally as boring, mostly interviews, men and women describing a particular place or a particular person. As he transcribed Cartwright was struck by how similar their testimony was to his own notes on the video footage.
He included as much incidental detail as possible. Voices, accents and cadence of both the interviewers and their subjects. How much the interviewees had to be coaxed or if they gave up the info unprompted and, most importantly, if and when the voices had appeared on other tapes.
Cartwright had worked hard over the years and he had somehow managed to make something from out of nothing. And now instructions had come down from up above. He was to be retired, his services no longer required. Cartwright wondered what would happen to his archive. Was the info also now redundant to simply languish untouched and untested?
He had just six months but it was long enough to do what he intended to do. He would transfer everything onto his computer and when he had uploaded the entire archive onto the hard drive he would post it on-line. Make it available to all and anyone who was so inclined could then test his system, come rain or come shine.
by submission | Nov 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
I called it Stig for obvious reasons. But, I shouldn’t have had to name it. It should’ve been identical to the other units. Nondescript. Interchangeable.
Like termites, ants, or caterpillars. Creatures that deposit signals in their environment to create a form of indirect communication and leaderless cooperation among themselves.
That’s how the units were designed to behave. Did behave.
All but Stig.
After it consistently lost touch with the other units in the lab and in the field, I studied it closely. Stig would always start out with the other units and appear to be following the path established to reach the programmed goal, but inevitably Stig would veer off on its own. Sometimes in the complete opposite direction of the rest of the units.
I observed how Stig established a separate search grid, methodically mapping the area it had arrived at on its own. It laid down markers as it was programmed, though only randomly did other units respond to its signals.
Stig had me stumped. I ran diagnostics. I wiped its drives. I reinstalled the default software. Stig still wandered off.
So, I began talking to Stig. “Where are you going, little one? What are you looking for? Why don’t you stick with the others?”
And the more time I spent with Stig away from the other units, the more I began to wonder what I was looking for, where I was going, why I hadn’t stuck with others.
My research had led me into a solitary search not unlike Stig’s. I’d never been good at following subtle social signals or indirect behavioral cues. I missed many of these markers.
Perhaps, Stig did as well.
Perhaps, that was the real path to explore. Not how creatures learn to follow one another, but why they sometimes cannot and must strike out on a very different path and boldly map their own way forward.
Stig had not followed my lead, but perhaps I could follow its. And develop a new cooperation between disparate beings. A road much less travelled that will make all the difference.
by submission | Nov 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Tyler Barlass
You rest the stock of the gun on your shoulder, place your finger on the trigger and shoot. You’ve done it so many times that your aim has become impeccable. The bullet whizzes through the cold, barren landscape until it meets its target – the reflective glass visor of a uniformed enemy some 100 yards away. These faceless adversaries had been coined “snatchers” by those who hadn’t been taken. You’ve killed so many that you can’t remember a time that you weren’t fighting these mysterious abductors.
That may not be entirely true. Your memory of when the world died is there somewhere in your head, rattling around in the repressed depths of your mind. You remember being on your back porch, with your best friend, watching monolithic buildings collapsing in the distance. You were young then. You’ve grown up in this new world and the struggles that have come with it. You don’t have the time or energy to get wistful about the past or what might have been. You now spend your days protecting the shoddily assembled camp that you call home, along with an ever-dwindling collection of survivors, from the grasp of the malevolent snatchers. Your friends, camp elders, even children, all taken by these interlopers without warning.
Recently, during an expedition to retrieve supplies from a neighboring camp, you and your fellow protectors were ambushed and everyone, except yourself, was captured and hauled off by the snatchers. You found a way to escape and decided then and there that it was time to stop protecting and start fighting back.
Not far beyond where your most recent quarry had fallen, you approach your destination. In front of you is a sprawling white plastic-walled compound that sits like a gleaming beacon on the charred land and dark sunless sky. Your heart jumps, you’ve never been this close.
The polyethylene walls are thin enough that a long, serrated knife pierces into it without much trouble. You crawl through your makeshift entrance, wincing at bright lights that emanate from above. You cough, the air is different here, it reminds you of your youth. Long forgotten memories, familiar faces, come rushing into your mind.
You ready your rifle and move slowly through the blindingly bright halls. Everything clean, white, pristine. It stands in stark contrast to the dismal, ash-covered living spaces that you’ve gotten so accustomed to. Sounds reverberate from somewhere nearby, you grip your gun tightly.
Turning the corner, you see a man in uniform but he wears no helmet, no visor, no mask, nothing to cover his pale skin. Even from this distance, you can make out his face. You see that his hair is brown like yours but kept short, the shape of his face is round but not plump and his eyes are a deep shade of blue. It stuns you, for you’ve never seen them with their mask off. Based on some of the stories that had been passed around camp, you weren’t sure that the snatchers were even human.
Shouting wakes you from your reverie. The man at the end of the hall notices you, yells something unintelligible, reaches for his own holstered gun and comes running down the hall. Despite your state of bewilderment, you must act. You rest the stock of the gun on your shoulder, place your finger on the trigger and hesitate.
by submission | Nov 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
It was good to be back in the Pacific again. Darting through the kelp beds, rolling through the surf, gathering at our sacred rocks. I knew in about 30 days this would wear thin on me. Then it would be back on land. A hike up Shasta, the desert and dawn with a lover, Aspen for some deep powder. Then that would wear thin.
The only thing constant in my life was the stars. When I am in the ocean, from the middle of the pacific, I see them burn bright. On land I climb mountains to be nearer to them. Then back to the sea, and back to the mountains, and then the sea. In both worlds I am no closer to the stars I crave.
Once, while gazing up into the night sky, in the Pacific, a killer whale popped up next to me. I thought that would be it. Too late to react so I just floated there waiting for him to devour me.
Instead, we just floated there. Eye to eye we shared a moment. He rolled over on his side, eye fixed to the stars. We stayed like that for almost an hour, and when the sun started to break over the horizon, we both nodded to each other and went our ways.
A month later I am in San Diego at some cliché college bar. I was attracted to a strange man. I knew something was different about him. I did not let him see me. I followed him. I could tell where he was going, I could sense it… the beach.
He stood on the end of a rocky out cropping. I saw him take off his clothes and fold them to a bundle. I saw him leap to what would be certain death, the tides and surf I knew so well would cut him to ribbons against the reef and rocks. My skin was near by so I slipped it on and went after him, eyes fixed on the spot he would surface. I raced there fast as I could but instead 500 yards out an Orca breached and I panicked. I rolled over and sped back to shore. The Orca followed me and I knew I could not make it. As I leaped to shore, I shed my seal’s skin as the orca devoured it. Skin gone, there was no way back.
I saw the Orca surface just beyond the surf line. He saw me naked, crying on the beach. I cursed him, shook my fist at him, stomped my foot on the sand. The orca buried its head to the waves and began swimming to the beach. At the last possible second, it breached and beached itself with an enormous thud, sliding forward with the last inch of surf. It’s skin split open and the man from the bar burst out, leaving just the skin of the orca which melted away until all that was left was a portion of the dorsal. We stood naked, face to face. He handed me his dorsal and without thinking I took a bite, and then devoured it all. After that we made love.
That was a lifetime ago.
Tomorrow my Orca and I go to the stars. We will stay at the space a station for a month while we train to go to the deep space array. We both know it is a one-way trip but neither of us we can ever be in our oceans again. But that’s OK, for together we have traded the oceans for the stars.
by submission | Nov 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bill Cox
It was a surprise to us all when Callum volunteered to inwardly migrate. We all knew a ‘friend of a friend’ who’d done so, but Callum was the first in our extended family.
I’ll be honest, I was disappointed that he’d signed up without consulting me. As brothers, we’d always been close. I’m not saying we didn’t have our secrets from each other, but inward migration was such a huge life decision that I would’ve expected at least a discussion.
I see the sense in it, given all the immigration from the Mediterranean countries and the pressure that puts on our resources, even in this quiet corner of Scotland. You can’t walk down the High Street these days without hearing conversations in half a dozen different languages. I understand that the Warming has rendered these places unsafe for human habitation, but home feels less like home every year.
Callum seemed happy with his decision and once you sign up that’s it, so it wasn’t as if he could change his mind. He’d the usual two weeks to put his affairs in order before reporting to the Migration Centre. He did his best to avoid me for that time, attending a seemingly endless procession of parties, but finally I got him to myself just two days before his migration. It all boiled down to one simple question. Why?
“I’m just fed up,” he explained. “Each year things get just a little bit worse. More blackouts, more shortages of food. More crowds, more disease outbreaks, more crime. You’re not stupid. You can see the way things are going.”
“But why inward migration? You’ll lose everyone that cares about you!”
“Don’t you remember what it was like when we lost Mum? She had breast cancer and twenty years ago they could have cured that. Now, everything is a death sentence. No chemotherapy meds, no radiotherapy. We had to watch her fade away in front of our eyes. I don’t have the strength to do that again. Don’t you see? The way things are going, the inevitability of it all, I’m going to lose everyone I care about. This way, I won’t have to see it, I won’t have to live through it. Instead, I’ll be living in a world without limits, without shortages, without death.”
Ultimately, I couldn’t agree with his decision. It felt too much like cowardice to me, running away from reality. Nevertheless, I still found myself by his side, on that final day at the Migration Centre’s reception area. The rest of the current crop of volunteers were there too, with their families, crowds of people laughing, crying, saying their goodbyes.
I hugged my brother one last time, then watched as he joined with the rest of the volunteers passing through the doors of the clinic. I thought about the machines waiting behind those doors, where Callum would be anaesthetised and have his brain scanned, one slice at a time. I knew that bodies were never returned to the families, as those who underwent inward migration weren’t considered to be legally deceased.
A version of Callum will live on in a virtual world, where time runs at a much faster rate. Fleeing from a collapsing civilisation, where energy and resources are at a premium, these digital refugees will live extended lives in paradise. As uploaded humans, their energy use and ecological footprint will be but a fraction of their biological counterparts.
The government tells us that they’re heroes who’ve made a sacrifice for the greater good.
All I know though is this.
I miss my brother.
