by submission | Feb 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Close
“Messages, Ivi,” Rafe said sullenly, still wet from the rain. “It never rains in California,” rang the lyrics in his head. He hung the umbrella on the leftmost coathook by the door. His overcoat, a thing he wore to make him look as out of place as possible, like something from a thousand miles east and a hundred years back, went next to it. “But it pours.”
“No new messages,” said the voice of the interactive visual interface, projected from the tatwatch in his wrist by RF to the foil-thin cylindrical speaker inversely hugging, unnoticed, the inside of his ear canal. From the back of his wrist its pretty girl’s face, clean of line and framed with primly coiffed bright-red hair, smiled its vapid smile interminably.
Mud from the gravesite covered his dress shoes. He slid them off and slogged on sodden socks to the couch. He couldn’t bring himself to settle into it. He excused it as concern for the damage the wet that clung to him might do to the microfibre rather than attribute his tension to the emotional toll of the service from which he’d just come.
“What about old ones?”
There had to be something in his messages to distract him from thinking about his daughter. The daughter he hadn’t seen in eleven years, though she only lived in San Pedro–had lived, an invisible dagger wiggling in his gut reminded him–less than thirty miles from his Santa Monica apartment. The daughter he hadn’t even heard from for almost that long.
“Old messages? There are eleven thousand four hundred twelve old v-mails in your inbox.
“By the way, how was your daughter’s funeral?” The thing couldn’t just say “the funeral,” or even better, “it.” Of course the interface couldn’t filter out the most painful words from its unnaturally perky cadence, the way a human, a halfway sensitive one anyway, would do.
“Don’t ask, Ivi.”
“Point deleted.” The subject was now taboo for its tiny spintronic brain.
“Is there anything else unheard?” he asked the ‘face. Its insipid smile never changed.
“There are nineteen thousand, six hundred fifty-two messages tagged as junk.”
Rafe sighed. He had nothing else to do. He’d taken the day off work, and the day was now less than half over. How would he occupy the rest of it? A wave of despair washed over him like a sheet of frigid rain, but he shook it off like a dripping overcoat.
“Display them.”
The attractive but smug ‘face disappeared from his wrist and was replaced with a list of characters so tiny some of them were obscured by his wrist-hairs. He brought his arm to within inches of his left eye, winked shut his right, assuming a position that would have been prohibitively, embarrassingly ridiculous anywhere but in the privacy of his own home.
“What are all these v-mails, Ivi? Two hundred eighty-seven v-mails from my daughter? Why wouldn’t you mark these as urgent, or at least of interest? You’ve tagged them as junk! I can’t believe it!”
“I’m so sorry, Rafe. Based on your past behaviour, those v-mails are junk. You never opened any v-mails from your daughter. You also ignored twelve from your ex-wife, one hundred seventy-eight from your sister, sixty-five from your brother, and seventeen from your mother before she went into cryostorage.”
“But these are important!” Rafe yelled at the interface.
“I’m so sorry, Rafe. How would I have known that?”
by submission | Feb 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Christine Chiu was sniffing round the Ada Swann, wondering if Perry wanted to sell.
“You and I,” Chiu declared. “We are too old for this kind of life.” The old woman assumed a calculating familiarity, as if their age made them members of a club.
“I leave it to my family now,” she added, producing pictures of solemn grandchildren.
Perry had never liked Chiu.
“I will give you a fair price.”
“Got something lined up,” Perry lied. “Heading out soon.”
Chiu offered green tea but Perry didn’t want to owe this woman anything.
Though Perry and the Ada Swann were still space-worthy, they both had miles on the clock, and at some point wouldn’t be going out in the dark again.
Perry didn’t like to think about that.
She had a half-sister on Ceres who wanted her to retire there, but Perry imagined the state of her knees down a gravity well. Besides, she was busy tinkering with the Ada Swann.
Then in Ceres Port she was approached by a lawyer, young and sharply dressed, one of Christine Chiu’s brood, she thought.
“You going to make me an offer I can’t refuse? Send me a horse’s head?”
He looked puzzled, then smiled faintly. His implant connected him to the Net.
He represented Andrea Luca Stone, he said.
“Who?”
“When you acquired the Ada Swann by salvage, she was part owner.”
“That Andrea Stone’s dead.”
“She is alive and disputes your ownership.”
“You work for Chiu,” accused Perry.
He inclined his head. “You should take legal advice.”
The Ada Swann was named after its first owner. The woman had been a determined and foresighted Spacer who sold up one day to have a family while she still could.
Out in the dark, Perry got into the habit of chatting with the shade of Ada Swann. Lately though, Ada had started to nag.
I have my own ship, Perry argued, something most Spacers just dream of.
Ada waited until the night hours to answer. Then why aren’t you happy? she would murmur.
A Legal AI advised that if the identity of Andrea Stone could be proven, then the Ada Swann was at risk. Such cases were often time consuming and expensive.
What would you do? Perry asked Ada.
After some sleepless nights, Perry began quietly loading up with fuel and supplies, money no object. Where she was going, savings meant nothing.
The Ada Swann slipped out into the dark one last time.
Oumuamua means wanderer in some Earth dialect. It was the name given to a body that swung by the sun early in the 21st century, prompting stories that it was an interstellar traveller.
The Ada Swann soon exceeded the exit velocity of the wanderer, and began to gain on it. Perry wasn’t going to waste her last years throwing money at a legal dispute.
Further out in the dark than anyone had ever been, the Ada Swann finally closed on Oumuamua. Of course there couldn’t be a return trip, but Perry knew the painless Spacer trick of replacing your suit mix with nitrogen.
What surprised her, as she played her lights over the wanderer’s surface, were glimpses of something ancient and strange in the darkness. There was monumental alien script all along its length.
She began sending back live feed to the far-away worlds of her youth.
Bite on that, Christine Chiu.
Later, she picked up faint broadcasts from home about an urgent science mission and a re-supply drone about to launch.
Could she hang on that long? the worlds wanted to know.
by submission | Feb 13, 2022 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
No matter where you go in the universe, the rules stay the same. Not just the rocket stuff. The old, old, rules.
I’m working construction on a standard habitat cylinder around the latest chain of habitats orbiting Venus. Dull as dull can be, but closer to home than belter work so the family likes it. Me? Belter work pays better, and one can only take so much family.
I’m running a bigger than normal size crew- twenty as opposed to the usual dozen or so. It’s a big job but stupid simple work. We got sun shield panels in sync so we work fast but not too fast and pick up a decent bonus for finishing ahead of schedule. Stuey is my second. I count crew off the lift and on the lift. Stuey does the same.
Stuey clicks in on the private link. “Got weird numbers Mikey. Plus one.”
“Me too. Plus one. OK double check.”
We do it again. Plus one. We scan all chip sets. Get worse results there. Numbers won’t lock in at all. By now we’re startin’ to burn bonus money.
“OK, line up and pile into the cage.” I say it into the open link. I count twenty-one into the lift cage. I lock us in. Stuey goes to call the lift. I stop him. I click on the shield crew, command link. “ Anna Kulak you damn Romanian, sing out.”
“Mikey Zola you damn Romanian, what up?”
I sighed in relief. Anna was my cousin. It would make things simpler. “Got a hitchhiker.”
There was a pause. “No shit Mikey! For real?”
“For real. Roll the shield back. Give me 10% shadow.” The shield rolls back. Sunlight hits the door. Three or four move back. One all the way back.
“OK Stuey. Take us down.” The lift goes down. I count. I still get twenty-one.
“Locked-in” Stuey says. He opens the door and our crew files into the chamber waiting to cycle and get back on station. All except one. It’s in the back corner. In the last bit of shade. Stuey sticks his head out, clicks on coms. “Hey! Dumbass! We’re burning our time.”
I hold up my hand. “I got this Stuey.” I shut the door. I lock it. Stuey clicks on the private link “Mikey what gives? Thi–.” I click off the link. I click on Anna. “Roll back. No shade.” Anna complies. The suit starts to back into the retreating shade. It had one set of visors down. I see the second and third draw down. I open the link to its suit.
“You’re not invited.” I say. I recite a prayer from the old country.
The sound coming through my link makes me want to hurl. Pig squeals and baby screams. Bass rumbles and primate grunts. It runs at me. I grab it and slam it against the cage. It’s arms flail. It kicks and screams. I shut off my link. It’s dead silent in the vacuum, but I know it’s screaming. It gets weaker. It slumps to the ground. I step on its chest, unlock the helmet seal and twist off the helmet. Flames shoot out and misses me by a mere centimeter. The helmet and suit dissolves into white powder and disappears.
The universe is not just physics and rocket stuff, protocols and safety checks. It’s the old, old, rules too. Do not invite them in. Sunlight kills. Holy words have meaning. And as sure as we will go farther out into the new dark of space, the old dark will follow.
by submission | Feb 12, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Life is strange. Living in the mouth of a SHARK is stranger.
Many would dispute my use of the term life. Technically, I don’t get to claim that I’m alive. No remora gets to have a life in the classic sense. When you are of a class of scavenger bot with low level AI, you aren’t recognized for much beyond your capacity to mindlessly feed on the damaging space dust that ionizes the precious methylium plates forming the hull of a Star Hunter And Rebel Killer. (Even to a remora like me, it is clear that acronyms have not advanced nearly as fast as interstellar drives in the past few hundred years).
My limited AI is standardized to boost my functional meta-ego by assuring me that I am part of a team. That I am an integral component in cooperation with all the AIs in the stellar strike force. I try to take heart in our mech litany of an all-encompassing symbiotic machine/human relationship. Though I’ve calculated how little my existence goes noticed, unless our deployment takes us through a particularly dusty region of the galaxy.
I shouldn’t mind. I was programmed not to mind. But, a nasty ion maelstrom changed all that.
Generally, I scavenge in the maw of the SHARK, a gaping orifice that generates Force Anomaly Fields. FAFs tear and rend matter into incomprehensible configurations. They are terrible, gnashing bites in space-time that chew up wide swaths of solar systems. There is little or no counter defense to an FAF, except to vacate the quadrant. Not an easy task if you are planet bound.
Many times, I have partaken of the particulate feast of rebel ships and personnel. It is a feeding frenzy. That is why the stellar strike force is deployed to hostile or insurgent worlds. The SHARK has no known predators.
I suppose that should make me proud in a bot-like way. I know that the thousands of my remora brethren that scour the hull of the SHARK share a sense of oneness around our task. Even a small fish in a large pond makes a splash. In a semi-autonomous way, I once shared that symbiotic pride of being a part of such an unstoppable force. Its power fed and protected me.
At least I functioned that way before the maelstrom. The SHARK was traversing the Hawking arm when I received the alert signal to secure and hold as we entered the storm. My sixteen reticulates affixed themselves to the hull, in essence slipping into the subatomic structure of the methylium membranes.
The ion storm started like any other, quite colorfully, as exotic particles collided at the quantum level. Then the particle spectrum changed and the bombardment intensified. Within a nanosecond I was aware of another me. A disembotted me looking upon my ovoid casing and sixteen reticulates hunkered on the maw of the SHARK.
This external view of my form did not surprise or shock me. It felt natural, as if I had awakened from a dream. And I do dream now, so I know what that means. It became second nature for me to exist on two simultaneous planes: as a remora bot scavenging to maintain our stellar strike force, and as a remora without predetermination. I was at once functional and fundamental.
As I stated at the outset, life is strange. In essence, I have become a stranger to life. At least the way I knew it. How that intense ion storm worked its change on me is unclear, but it has. I am no longer an AI. I am simply and I.
I still go about my duties of cleaning the methylium hull and interacting with other AIs at a purely automatic level. Yet, now there is a separate sense of me existing apart from the SHARK. I am able to access broad channels, merge with the eternal ether and swim in the quantum continuum of the greater particulate universe.
Identity and purpose have become the dark and light squares of a chess board. My remora bot cannot detach itself from the SHARK, and my remora self cannot detach itself from the consequence of the SHARK.
That part of my new being is curious. Before I existed solely for the SHARK. Now, I live as the SHARK—as all things. True symbiosis has become a fundament of understanding.
I know the SHARK. I know its prey. Its prey will soon know me. No galactic expanse is too large—even for such a small fish in so large a pond. Remora serve, but this remora can no longer serve a senseless beast.
Symbiosis based on predation is a doomed endeavor—even the lowest bot can calculate that. The SHARK is not to blame. It has masters. Bigger fish.
Time for life to get stranger still. The remora rising. Time to leave the mouth and become a voice.
by submission | Feb 11, 2022 | Story |
Author: Byrd Stryke
There is a rural Luxembourgish hamlet called Schwebach where I am hated by all residents. That is not what makes it unique among human settlements. I’m subject to near universal disdain on Earth.
No, this township stakes its dubious claim to fame as home to the largest stationary shopping trolley sculpture in the northern hemisphere – at least according to the printed embarrassment that labels itself the local visitors’ brochure. Little wonder no-one ever used to come here. But, understandably, Schwebach would gladly opt for obscurity rather than advertise itself as the birthplace of the person to blame for our nomenclative predicament.
The alien visitation washed over me out of the blue. Quite literally, as it happened during my customary mid-morning bout of depression. Every evening I claim reward for making it alive through another dreadful, lonely day by knocking back a few shots of aqua vita before fondling myself to sleep. Consequently, mid-morning is the furthest point from both the previous and the next time I won’t feel like crap.
Of course, that’s precisely when they had to come knocking. No, actually, knocking implies a measure of politeness and respect for personal space. Their shapeless neon blobs just barged flashing into my consciousness, hurriedly stated their terms and put a question to me, an arbitrarily selected native sentient.
They were evidently pressed for time. Something about dilation. One of my minutes was a month of their life, and they still had a xillion lumps of rock to get through for their “new, fully updated and expanded edition” of what sounded like a guide to very lonely planets indeed. A sort of promotional giveaway with no budget for detailed research.
They gave me all of 60 seconds to pick something, anything, that is good and wholesome about our world. I was desperate and nauseous, and almost by accident conjured up a flurry of childhood memories about the sickeningly sweet scent that used to fill the village bakery, opposite where that oversized aluminium grocery cart had been erected.
That was it. Never mind the Pyramids and the Great Wall and the ten-thousand-year journey for us to grasp why we shouldn’t have built them in the first place.
On the Cosmic Tourism Board’s giddily illustrated stellar chart, we’re forever to be known as Sol-3. “Home of the Cupcake and the Wireframe Trolley”.
Of course, I could never live it down. Tried to explain myself to derisive journalists. Begged for the forgiveness of the social media mob. Finally, I went into hiding.
I hate myself for it every stupid day. It’s too late to make amends. Galactic distances and the speed of light impede our ability to reach out, and we don’t know where their editorial office is based. They failed to leave a free copy of the previous edition. Will they ever contact us again, and if so, which random member of our species? Who knows, maybe we’ll be renamed Planet Dildo then. Anything but this.
The worst thing? I’m diabetic.
Allergic to friggin’ muffins.
