by submission | Jul 23, 2022 | Story |
Author: Eric Fomley
“What are you doing?” Sammie asks.
Bo is slicing through the artificial flesh on the back of her neck, folding the plastic material away and exposing the circuitry.
“I’m packing you up,” Bo says. His chin trembles and he chews the inside of his lower lip.
“Have I done something wrong?”
“No,” he whispers.
He reaches into his tool bag and produces a pouch of fine tipped tools.
“Please,” Sammie says, her synthesized voice quieter than Bo has ever heard, “if I’ve done something that has upset you I will change it going forward. My programming is adaptive based on your feedback.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” he says.
The bot turns to face him, brown artificial eyes meeting his. “I don’t want to be packed away. I want to help, especially now that Mrs. Anderson isn’t—”
“Please don’t. Turn around,” Bo chokes out.
Sammie turns.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Me too.”
Tears roll down Bo’s cheeks. His hands tremble. He pauses before he snips the wire to the power coupler, reconsidering his decision.
But he can’t.
He cuts the wire and Sammie crumples to the floor with an electronic moan, auto packing into a square no larger than a suitcase.
Bo looks down at her and lets out a ragged sigh. Maybe one day he’d unpack her again, power her on, and tell her he was sorry. But Sammie had always been his wife’s bot, and right now, she reminds him too much of her. A walking, talking reminder that his wife is gone forever.
by submission | Jul 22, 2022 | Story |
Author: Samantha Kelly
Jac entered the cafeteria, tapping her ID bracelet against the sensor. She waited for the machine to calculate an ideally nutritious meal. Once it arrived, Jac took her tray and sat at the end of one of the tables. The other paramedics were in the middle of conversation and Jac knew it’d be a few more months on the job before she developed the same easy rapport. Instead she just listened as the conversation turned to the gala the night before, to celebrate ten years of MediCorp going public.
“The old man just loves the sound of his own voice.” Hector Serrano said, rolling his eyes. “Good champagne though, I’ll give him that.”
Jac possessed none of the same cynicism as her colleague. Quite the contrary, she had found Mr Nazari’s speech inspiring. That the rates of abuse to paramedics had decreased over 300%, thanks to the mech program? It was amazing news. But before she could say anything, the bell sounded to call the paramedics back to work.
Jac’s final patient of the night was Marie Taylor – a smoker and heavy drinker. She had enhancements, but older models, not well maintained. Currently in the latter stages of heart failure. Jac started chest compressions with hands that would never tire. Hands that were not her own, but that she controlled down to the twitch of a finger. She’d never had trouble with the mech, in the way other paramedics did. Piloting came naturally to her. But compressions weren’t going to be enough. Marie Taylor’s heart needed to be shocked. Jac pulled up the interface and switched the mech to its defibrillation mode. And nothing happened.
Normally, the toughened casing of the mech’s hands would light up an electric blue, to signify that the device was working. But there was no colour change. Jac pressed the hands to Marie Taylor’s chest, hoping it was just a problem with the indicator. Lightly at first, and then with increased pressure. Still nothing. Jac brought up a diagnostic menu, but everything seemed to be working correctly. Until a note came up on the assessment. ‘Insurance discontinued – untreatable.’ And then Jac could only watch until Marie Taylor was gone.
Her office appeared as Jac ripped the headset off, allowing it to fall to her desk with a thud. She focused her gaze on the potted geraniums her parents had given her to celebrate her first day, while breathing in and out for counts of four. And then Jac brought up the recording of her call on the monitor. She watched it over and over, hoping it would show something different. Marie Taylor had been in a dark zone when Jac was called, which meant the only light came from the reds and blues of the ambulance. It made things difficult to see, but not impossible. And what she saw was that nothing appeared to be amiss. Apart from the obvious, horrifying fact that she could not provide any treatment to the woman in front of her until she died, and that seemed to be intentional.
A search confirmed Jac’s worst fears. Marie Taylor was not the only patient deemed ‘untreatable.’ In the ten years since the mech program launched, thousands of patients had died due to lack of insurance. And where a human might be moved to treat them anyway, a mech could be programmed against that sort of sentimentality. Suddenly, Mr Nazari’s speech didn’t seem quite so inspirational. It sounded more like a cover up, Jac thought as she sat in her office in silence, allowing her next call to ring out.
by submission | Jul 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rachel Medina
I admit I am not the most skilled gardener, but these flowers say the cruelest things. Not that I don’t deserve it. I know that I do. But, if these flowers die, that’s it. I’m dead, too.
It wasn’t easy to get this gig. You have to remember where you put the bodies. This is important because if there’s no body, there’s no soul. It doesn’t even have to be the entire body. I had a finger that worked, so you can get lucky. The scientists incinerate the flesh pieces and then mix the ashes into the pods with wood chips and other compost stuff. After that, it gets tricky.
You only have 24 hours to get the pods buried with the orchid flower roots. I prepped each container with the special soil and set the hothouse temperature just right. The scientists stressed that the pod had to go in with the root right away or it might not work. I paced at the door all day waiting for the shipment to arrive. The guard watched me, nervous. He thought I was going to escape! Why would I go through all this just to run? I snatched the pods from the delivery guy as soon as he got to the door and then I raced to the hothouse.
The scientist labeled each pod with the name and picture of who was inside. I thought that was a nice touch even though I remembered them all. Why wouldn’t I? I spoke to them while I worked, burying each one back in the dirt. I welcomed my lovelies and thanked them for this chance to make things right.
The directions showed that you have to rotate the pod in the soil every 12 hours. I set an alarm to remind me. I slept in the hothouse every night that first month even though my sleeping bag got wet and the ground was uncomfortable. This was the only way. I had to be diligent or I was a dead man.
I whooped and hollered so loud at the sight of the first tiny leaf breaking through the dirt that the guard raced in with his gun drawn! He didn’t smile when I showed him, just shook his head and left. He pretty much hates me.
The scientist warned that even in the hothouse orchids are delicate and difficult to grow. I think that’s why the government chose them. They didn’t want to make it easy for a guy like me. Once the leaves open, the flowers should soon appear. That is the critical moment. If the flower doesn’t have red streaks on its petals, that means that the process didn’t work. The soul won’t inhabit the orchid. I’m out, back to Death Row.
Luckily, each of my flowers bloomed with red streaks. One flower sprouted thorns after I spoke to it the first time. I guess I understand that. Another one has flower petals so pale that they look invisible, except for the jagged red streaks. I don’t know what happened to that one. The petals bloomed pink and beautiful, but as soon as I whispered to it the color drained out. Some of the flowers turn away from me no matter what I do. The biggest ones are also the loudest. I can’t get a word in sometimes! They scream and shout horrible things at me, which is weird because they look so pretty.
by submission | Jul 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
An old spacer complaint is that home is never where you left it.
Spacers end up in bars like this. Relationships don’t survive years out in the dark, but that doesn’t matter here, one loner recognised another.
Perry listened to them arguing about racing. They dismissed the sport because it was playing at something that had been their lives.
“The Worlds’ Cup,” grumbled someone at the bar. “Ion drives and gravity slingshots. It’s just trundling round the planets.”
“At least there’s some skill in light sails,” declared another. The Inner System Classic had just finished.
But they kept their real gripes for fusion torch racing. The Voyager Trophy was coming up again, all the way out to Voyager 2 and back. Billed as the toughest race.
Perry kept quiet, but the spacer with the prosthetic eye remembered something.
Hadn’t Perry been involved with the Trophy a couple of years back? Conversations faltered and heads turned.
She’d signed up the Ada Swann as a safety ship. Already far out in the Kuiper, she was well positioned for Voyager, and if the race went to plan, all she had to do was sit and monitor the comms traffic.
Racers were going slowest as they rounded Voyager, before plummeting sunwards again. That gave the Ada Swann, built for endurance rather than speed, a chance to intercept.
But the lead ships had turned and gone when there came a distress call from the Estrada Silva, a singleship competitor with a runaway burn.
Over the years, every spacer in that bar had heard radio voices calling for help. Sometimes a rescue was possible. Sometimes you could only listen.
As Perry understood it, António Esteves Ferreira had been out of his seat when some fault ramped up the torch, dropping him the length of his cabin and breaking bones, a high-g burn that emptied his fuel tank.
Perry had nightmares after that, full of alarms and red lights, trying to climb back to her own seat with limbs too heavy to lift.
“Don’t see the point of safety ships,” the spacer accused Perry, his lens gleaming.
Others spoke up. In their time perhaps they’d plucked someone from the dark, or a ship had matched orbits to help them. The alternative was doing nothing. Surely some chance was better than none?
But the singleship had flashed past the Ada Swann, and around the bar they thought that was the melancholy end of it. They started arguing about what they would have done. The dark did not forgive. Still, they railed against it.
Perry waited to tell the last part.
A badly injured pilot, on painkillers. Just hang on, she told him, though they both knew help wasn’t coming.
Then she saw an actinic spark in her telescope. Ferreira had lit his torch again, burning the last dregs of fuel, not to slow down, but accelerating onwards.
Perry looked round at these spacers who had made the unforgiving dark their home. Didn’t they feel something had been lost? Once people chased down game or fled from predators. These days it was just running in circles against the clock. You only played at things when they didn’t matter.
“Civilisation caught up,” someone shrugged. ” I remember when Vesta Port was just some tunnels. Now people have jobs.”
There was a resentful air. “Go tell cruise ship captains.”
But Perry had heard the faint voice from the Estrada Silva. At least he would beat Voyager to the stars, Ferreira had whispered. None of those racers would catch him now.
“A challenge for you. First to the worlds of Centauri.”
by submission | Jul 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Henson
After work, I stop by to check on my father and find him carrying a flashlight around the well-lit house.
“Is everything OK, Dad.”
“It’s your mother.”
“I miss her too, Dad.”
“No, Son. This is your mother.” He holds up the flashlight.
His answer jolts me. “Dad, you don’t believe that’s Mom, do you?”
“Not the torch, Son, the light. Look, don’t you see her?” I squint as he aims the beam at my eyes.
Speechless, I suggest we take a walk, hope the cool evening will clear his mind.
As we make our way around the neighborhood, I can hardly edge in a word as Dad jabbers to the spot jiggling jauntily beside him. It’s an older area where tree roots have heaved the concrete, so when gathering darkness fills in the dappling of shadows on the sidewalk, Dad asks Mom to lead the way and aims the flashlight ahead of us.
As we head for home, Dad’s conversation with Mom becomes animated. “The night air makes me feel spry again, Dear. How about you?” He cocks his head, says “Sounds good to me,” and picks up the pace.
Back at the house, I go to the kitchen for a drink of water. When I return to the living room, Dad is in the recliner, his pants undone, flashlight between his legs. I gasp and clamp my hand over my eyes until I hear his zipper.
“Sorry, Son. In my defense, it was your mother’s idea.”
Over the next week or so, I try to reason with Dad, but the light of Mom blinds him to logic. I think about sneaking out the batteries, but that seems cruel. I decide to go softly, confident Dad will come to his senses. In the meantime, he isn’t hurting anyone. He’s keeping the house tidy. His hygiene seems OK.
One evening, I get to my father’s place after nightfall. When I discover the house empty, I’m concerned till I hear murmuring and find Dad on the patio, the flashlight shining into the sky.
“Your mother said it was time to let go.” He slides the switch. Mom disappears. I feel a chill.
I stare up at the Milky Way and imagine Mom. After a few moments, a shooting star streaks overhead. When I turn to ask Dad if he saw it, he isn’t there.
