by submission | Oct 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Bryant Benson
Timothy sat in a brightly lit, featureless room. Across from him was a woman with thick glasses and a tight bun. She was as institutional as the room and had yet to look up from her clipboard. After an agonizing amount of time passed, she clicked her pen closed and spoke.
“Timothy, how long have you known Margaret?”
Timothy bolted awake and replied with a smile.
“Oh, we’ve been friends as far back as I can remember. Yes, we’re…well, we were quite close.”
His tone dropped as his smile dissipated.
“Friends? Close?” The woman glanced up at Timothy for the first time and raised an eyebrow.
“It’s okay. We expect you to care. That attention to detail is why we’re the best in the business.” She continued, without feeling, “So you do understand that Margaret is no longer with us?”
Timothy looked down at his fidgeting hands and breathed, “Yes.”
The woman clicked her pen open and scribbled on her clipboard before speaking again, “Now tell me Timothy, do you miss her?”
Timothy closed his eyes and thought back to Margaret’s fragile skin that would break often. He would tend to her tiny wounds while she told him of the concert halls her hands would fill when they were once capable of playing the piano. He remembered that she was afraid of thunder and would lay her graying head on his shoulder on rainy nights until she would fall asleep. He would stay there all night, wondering how it would feel to sleep like her.
He knew what he had to say. Timothy opened his eyes and replied, “No.”
She proceeded, “Excellent, we will have a new assignment for you tomorrow morning.”
She stood up and turned toward the door.
“Wait,” Timothy stammered, “So soon?”
She turned toward him with a perplexed look and spoke sternly, “Well yes, I didn’t think the time would be so relevant.”
Timothy hung his head and stared at his reflection in the cold metal table. The woman slid back into her chair and leaned forward.
Quietly, she asked, “Are you…sad?”
He nodded in agreement.
She glanced back at the large mirror behind her and raised one finger.
In the most sincere sounding voice she could muster, the woman asked, “Why are you sad Timothy?”
Timothy’s voice cracked as he spoke, “I loved her.”
The woman inhaled as she placed her hand on Timothy’s and whispered, “I know you did.”
The interviewer nodded toward the mirror. She let go of his hand, stood up, and walked out. Before the door closed behind her it was pushed open by three figures in bulky yellow hazmat suits. They grabbed Timothy as if they were simply moving furniture.
Timothy returned to his memories of Margaret. He saw her smile as she danced in her living quarters back when her legs still worked. She was all he ever wanted to care about.
He accepted his fate and was escorted out of the interview room. He was led into a much larger room with a massive exam table. Timothy was docile and silent as a long cylinder was driven through the base of his skull. His lifeless body was shoved into a chute where it landed atop a pile of other underperforming drones.
In the days that followed, his synthetic skin was melted down to be recycled as a cost saving measure. The device that pumped circulatory fluid through his veins was disassembled to be refurbished. His brain was incinerated along with whatever belongings Margaret left behind that went unclaimed by her surviving family.
by submission | Oct 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“You’re a what?”
“A panpsychist.”
“Whoa. Trippy. You psychoanalyze cookware or something?”
“In a way.”
“Really? Double trippy.”
“Panpsychists study consciousness with the belief that all matter is conscious. From a frying pan to an amoeba to a rock to a duck-billed platypus to that joint you’re smoking.”
“So, I can talk to my doobie? Triple trippy. It is truly a Doobie Brother!”
“Unlikely. Remember, consciousness has nothing to do with intelligence or the ability to communicate. It’s all about resonance, oscillations between two states, and the ability for the right type of vibrations to sync. Shared resonances that expand to more and more constituents can achieve greater complexities—especially in the gamma, theta and beta waves of human neuro-electric activity. So, I don’t think your doobie will be talking to you anytime soon.”
“Oh, man, but it has lots to say. Smokin’ A.”
“I’m sure. But I really need you to focus on this next part.”
“Is this the test?”
“It’s all just a test that we’re really here. Consciousness is our quantum check on reality, and reality is simply all the observable possibilities combined into a single wave function.”
“Surf’s up, dude. Cowabunga. Quatro trippy. Quatro trippy.”
“Indeed. Are you ready?”
“First, take a hit with me, man. We gotta generate some good vibes.”
“Now you’re seeing it. That’s what it’s all about. Good vibrations. Shared and shared alike. So, give me that hit. And talk into the lava lamp.”
by submission | Oct 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Ken Poyner
The robot has seen his finger smashed by the iron press. His job is to slide uncoiled metal plates into place for the iron press to complete flattening them. But the press came down while the target was still being settled into its brackets. He has to report to the maintenance supervisor, suffer damage assessment, be queued for repair. The maintenance supervisor has seen this before. It is a regular fault. He could order a recalibration of production floor timing, ensure this stops happening. But he is an older model, and not all of his grievances have been zeroed out.
by submission | Oct 15, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
Look, dying on Mars is easy. Equipment failure, sudden illness, inability to follow the safety instructions, they can all lead to the same (you must excuse the phrase) dead end. Making something look like a genuine accident is tricky, but it’s doable, especially with practice.
Oh, that won’t do? Okay, I understand. The body might contain something it shouldn’t, like a microdot or a traceable enhancement. Or there needs to be some strategic ambiguity about their status for while, because other matters need to be cleared up. Hey, it happens, I get it. Oh, it’s the insurance policy? I see.
Well, you need to understand, evading the Watchers can be tricky. Ah, I thought you might suggest that, but getting to the people in the monitoring stations is never as easy as the sensies pretend. The folks there are regularly vetted; if they’re even remotely compromisable, they’re shunted elsewhere. Worse, they’re well paid, which makes bribery extremely expensive; and even then they might turn around and hand you in anyway. Too risky. You can end up having to dispose of multiple bodies to cover your trail, which is kind of meta and self-defeating.
But if you know where to look, there are blind spots in the surveillance nets, and as a last resort there are ways of getting electronics to fritz while avoiding the kind of critical system damage that gets a Response Team on your neck in five minutes flat.
So the real problem is getting rid of the body. You can’t bury it, because there’s no vegetation: cuts in the ground are really obvious. You can’t leave it out for scavengers, because there aren’t any. You can’t just abandon it a long way outside town, either, because there’s no oxygen out there, which means no microbes, which means the stiff just waits there failing to decompose until someone inevitably comes across it. Most inconvenient.
Getting it into the organic recycling plant is next to impossible, because the Powers That Be aren’t stupid. They keep a close eye on all the messiness that’s sent for processing; even corpses need the official paperwork before they’ll let the machines touch them. False paperwork, you say? There are no good forgers on Mars, my friend; it’s not one of the skills on the Wanted Immigrants list. Plus everything’s coded for scanning, and there’s no way to fake that.
But the right combination of industrial chemicals can dissolve a body, given time. No, I’m not telling you what that combination is; trade secret. Getting hold of the stuff isn’t easy, but that’s not your problem, is it? All you need to know is that it can be done safely and cleanly, with no comebacks.
So, from my point of view, we can do business; you’ll just need to tell me which piece of grit we’re removing from the well-oiled machinery of your life. Your wife? Ah, a classic. Almost as popular a choice as a lover.
Thank you for confirming that. Now, as you can see, this is a blaster. Just stand up and we’ll make our way slowly to the exit; no need to disturb the other drinkers. My colleague at the door will take you into custody. Conspiracy to murder, tut tut, very naughty; you’ll be wanting a lawyer. Yes, I’m a Watcher; yes, I’ve been recording all this. Now come along; fortunately for your better half, death in Marsport really is far harder to arrange that people realise.
by submission | Oct 14, 2022 | Story |
Author: Ross Field
“It’s time Mason”. His flip flops slapped down the hallways, they seemed as foreign to him as the hands holding his shackles and shoulders. Hands crawled all over his body as soon as they dropped him into the chair. Restraints were winched, electrodes connected and veins impaled. After the years and appeals he was here. There were men in suits and white coats examining him and their screens. He heard the end of a speech by one of the suited men to a gallery of well dressed spectators, “…..a paradigm shift for society”. As the orator nodded to a white coat a wailing began from behind him.
As it began, his eyes burned and dried. His brain remembered the story his grandfather had told him of how Native Americans had torn the eyelids of their prisoners and staked them to the ground staring into the sun. His mouth drowned in metallic taste. Then he was there, he saw them again, asleep and entangled in front of the fireplace in the half refurbished room. The familiar smells both swarmed into his nostrils and seeped out of his brain. He saw again the fireplace poker, the hammer and screwdriver. He cried when he did it this time. Afterwards he knew that he had to get away, his life depended on it, but the exhaustion dragged him to the floor of an untainted corner. He hit, cut and burned himself to fight the closing eyes.
He was brought back by the sound of wailing. The suited and white coated men were grim faced, he turned to see a white coat by his side, the face turned away and in its hand a plunged syringe. He didn’t have time for his eyes to navigate down the tubing from the syringe to his arm as he closed his eyes a second time.
*********
“It’s time Hernandez”. The suited man nodded. His eyes felt aflame and his mouth rusted. He saw the lights race off down the country road before he saw the broken body. Exiting his car he followed the path of the bullet holes down the decimated car to the other bodies. He ran when he saw the blue lights come over the hill behind him. When he opened his eyes there was the suited man and the white coat in the empty room, even the guards had gone. The white coated man stepped to his side.
*********
Dear Dr Ritten
I am afraid to inform you that as of this moment the Plain Valley correctional facility will terminate its partnership with Caventon University. After the participation and execution of 32 inmates at a vastly increased timeline of your discretion you have still been unable to prove the Ritten-Heiss Theorem. No one is more disappointed than myself to not see an empty chair as hypothesized by yourself and your recently deceased colleague Dr Heiss. Instead, this pursuit of a new era in rehabilitation has tainted us all.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Temball
Head Warden, Plain Valley Correctional Facility
