by submission | Jul 29, 2020 | Story |
Author: Marvin Thiele
It was 2050 and the clocks were striking thirteen. Technological addiction was widespread. Everyone sat on their couch, headset on, enjoying artificial utopia.
VR was about five years old, and everyone was already bending over backward for it. The simulations, you see, weren’t fixed, like paintings, books, or movies. In VR, one could alter anything with a mere mental command. Think, and ye shall receive.
Daily life had been eradicated, kaputt gemacht. With the advent of automation, entire grocery stores, fast-food restaurants, and inter-continental highways were now in the hands of robots.
There were no jobs. The government sent out money and that was that. People ordered take-out, took a dump, and went back into the VR, back to those fake, titillating women perpetually pleading for sex…
Tough world to be an artist. We floundered about on the surface of a bottomless ocean waiting to drown.
The Musee du l’Ouvre had closed. MoMa too. People weren’t showing up anymore. No one cared about the Mona Lisa or the Starry Night. There was nothing interesting about a still image—a non-digital one—constructed by a flawed human being.
With all this over my head, I got perpetually drunk and sad.
One night, out of frustration, I drew a stick man. I put a rope around his neck and hung him from the ceiling fixture. I crossed out his eyes and wrote on his shirt: Art is Dead.
I placed the “piece” on the Internet for one hundred million dollars, as a statement, as my fundamental critique of the world.
*
A week passed, and I was called by an unknown man. He expressed an interest in my sketch. As we neared the end of our conversation I had to know,
“Why?”
“Because it’s the least I could do,” he said.
“Why is it the least you could do?”
“Because I made VR. I programmed everything. I spent years interviewing test groups, refining the technology, getting it just right, dispensing with every error. I’m responsible for the state of things. I know that all the museums have closed, that all the movie theaters are empty, that all the symphonies have disbanded. I know just as well as you do about the way art has slipped off everyone’s mind, how it has disappeared surreptitiously down winding streets and lightless alleyways. But, please! Accept this as my apology. No, as my eulogy.”
“You are the Devil,” I said. “I think you’ve ruined the world.”
A day later, I walked to the store, and I did indeed mail off the drawing. In the evening, I went into my room and sat on my bed, congratulating myself. I looked at my bank account and the one hundred million dollars.
It was my first sale.
Yet, for whatever reason, I couldn’t get the happy mood to last and just ended up crying in a long cathartic fashion.
I thought about the past. I thought about how people used to work to survive, how they used to live in a way that would let them keep living, how it was never about getting there but about the going.
I figured it was as good a time as any. I fastened the rope and took a black marker to draw some crosses over my eyes. I kicked the chair out at just the right angle so that I could look identical to my drawing.
On my ragged white shirt, in giant black marker, read the words:
Art is Dead
And that, I thought, should do.
by submission | Jul 28, 2020 | Story |
Author: Gerard Mulligan
As she requested, he had retrieved the red blanket from the bed upstairs and thrown it over her feet as she lay stretched out on the sofa. She had murmured thanks and was soon falling asleep with her hands instinctively covering her stomach. He waited, hovering over her, for anything else she might need. Only when she actually began to snore gently, did he pull away and drift over to the table to sit and read the paper. God, he thought, glancing through the black headlines, this world was a total mess. War, war, and more war blotted every page. They only finished one when they had started another.
After a few minutes, he had had enough of the paper. He took up the coffee and looked out the window onto the street five stories down. A light rain fell outside. Four months to go before the baby was born. They were getting there. Four months was a long time though. Behind him, on the wall by the door, the clock ticked. In three hours, he had to be at work. He hated working nights. He knew that he would probably not get to sit down again until well after midnight. Still, the rent and bills had to be paid. And it would be worth it. This was a good home. A fresh home. They had arrived just in time though, another few years and the place would have gone to hell. Still, for the moment, everything was still reasonably good. It could be all brought back. As he had been told during his introduction, there was no ‘irreversible damage’ yet. They had time to fix everything. Once they had the right people in place.
Their child would be among the first. Yes, some of the early stacks had been here for nearly twenty years now. Some were already preparing to leave their birth homes and head out to take the positions to mold this new home. However, everyone knew the first stacks rarely ever rose to prominence. They did the ground-breaking work, prepared the way as such, but it was the stacks that came after which really reaped the rewards. There was endless debate about why that was. He reckoned it was because simply by then there was enough of them, after forty years or so, to forge the links around the entire planet needed for good governance. The first stack was too spread out on too many continents to really connect up. That was why he had waited until volunteering to come here. By the time their child was leaving school, there would be plenty of them in government and civil roles so finding a suitable position would be much easier.
The clock ticked on. He had to get up. He needed to get the uniform ready, shower, and pack some food for the night ahead. No matter where he went, he always had to work. So many planets, so many jobs. All the same no matter where it was. Work was work. Maybe soon, he might have to think about giving it up and settling down. He still fondly remembered the first planet. What a place. Days that went on forever and water as clear as the air itself. That was a good planet. And more-or-less colonized by now. They were already thinking of giving it a ‘Settled’ designation. Maybe then, in twenty or so years, when the child was reared, he would give it some more thought. But until then, he had to work. He stood, leaving her sleeping peacefully, and went to get ready.
by submission | Jul 26, 2020 | Story |
Author: Brian Maycock
Peter’s hand was cold as she led him down to the beach. She was unsettled so wanted to talk but they had run out of conversation weeks ago.
Peter can talk on more than two hundred topics. She had read that somewhere. But she had not focused on the blurb as she had entered her details. She had been wishing she could have afforded more than the basic model. Still, she had thought, you have to begin somewhere.
Peter stumbled. The path down to the beach – a generous term for a narrow patch of pebbles and seaweed – was littered with empty beer bottles, fast food wrappers and, this morning, a pair of abandoned trainers.
She gripped his hand tighter and wondered if coming here had been a mistake.
They had made love on this beach on their first night together. The only things missing for her from realising this particular dream had been a full moon and the feel of sand on her skin.
Not long after this the problems with battery life developed and having to keep Peter plugged in became a real passion killer.
“Let’s sit here.” She brought him to a flat rock onto which they could both just fit, and rested her head on his shoulder. He still released the pheromones she had chosen during set up overnight, and she enjoyed the remains of the latest lingering batch for a moment.
It was a cloudy day with rain threatening, and they were alone apart from an old couple who sat on striped deckchairs and stared out over the sea.
She sat up, wrapped her arms across her chest and told Peter, “I want you to walk into the water and keep going.”
“You are breaking up with me?” he asked after a pause to run through the possibilities.
She had made the decision days ago but had been putting it off. You see adverts online, you see them in charity shops or simply abandoned and left to fend for themselves on the streets, which of course they cannot do.
She did not want that. She wanted it to be romantic.
“Take your clothes off,” she said.
As he undressed, she ran a finger down the line of his back. “It says here you’re bio-degradable.”
His clothes were not. She would take them to the charity shop, along with the rest of his things. It was time for a fresh start.
“Goodbye Peter,” she said.
He looked at her. “I can’t swim.”
“Goodbye.”
He began walking towards the water.
Once upon a time, some people thought that the A.I.s would become the dominant force but like other technologies as soon as the sheen wore off they became disposable.
Peter was all but invisible to the man and woman sitting on their deckchairs. Neither commented as he was enveloped by the grey water.
She was already back on the path. She hesitated over the discarded trainers but decided to leave them. They were too dirty for the charity shop.
by submission | Jul 25, 2020 | Story |
Author: Oisin Hurley
Nailah stopped to catch her breath in the shadow at the base of the pyramid. One time her ancestors would have been buried here, surrounded by items they could bring to the afterlife. They had food from the chill lands to the north arrayed around their death masks, gifts of silken clothing from the rulers of the teeming societies to the east laid at their anointed feet. How far had they fallen from that gilded age? The sorrow for the descent of her people from rulers to rabble haunted her, weighed down the days of wearying work forced upon them by the invaders of their lands. That was why she had rebelled, damaged the collection of machine suits, and stolen this one. It rested quietly around her, mute but for low fans that followed her own breathing. A small green bar at the edge of her vision meant many days of reserve in the batteries. She would fly south like an arrow to the peopled lands. She would escape this dry hell where the invader folk lived, avoiding the moisture of the forests.
A small cascade of sand and pebbles from the ancient stone at her back hissed in her enhanced hearing. Distracted from her thoughts, she felt a low, rolling rumble — an armoured remote approaching. She could outrun its pursuit. She fed power to the leg motors of the suit and ran toward a horizon of dunes, silver-lit by the crescent moon.
by submission | Jul 24, 2020 | Story |
Author: David Henson
Richard teeters to his pig. Made of a hard, shiny material, it’s pink, sports a green tux, and is about two feet tall and five feet long.
Steve scoops the pot into his pile of poker chips. “You OK, Richard?”
“Not OK,” Richard slurs. “Wife left me. Girlfriend dumped me. Daughter hates me. Living in this crummy apartment. Zap me away, pig.”
John winces.
“Actually,” Harry says, “there hasn’t been a verified incident of vaporization except for failure to stroke at midnight.”
The poker buddies have focused on the game but can no longer restrain themselves:
“We don’t know that people are vaporized.”
“I heard a cult believed the pigs are sending people to some utopian planet and got zapped on purpose.”
“I still can’t understand who would put billions of pigs here.”
“Stan’s brother was sick. Couldn’t get to his pig when it squealed at midnight. Got zapped even though his wife tried to stroke for them both.”
“At least parents can stroke for their kids.”
“What about people who got zapped before we figured out the rules?”
“I heard we nuked one and didn’t scratch it.”
“Maybe aliens are watching us … like a kind of reality show back on their world.”
“Maybe like in that old show,” Richard mumbles, “the aliens are eating people.”
“On that happy note,” Steve says, “we should settle up so we can be home to stroke our pigs at midnight.”
After everybody leaves, Richard downs a glass of whiskey then lurches to bed. He’s passed out when his pig squeals at midnight.
***
Richard wakes up in the bedroom of his house, not his raunchy apartment. He hurries to the kitchen. There’s his wife, Rose, and daughter, Lilly.
Rose kisses him on the cheek. “You overslept, Honey. Better hurry.”
“Daddy, remember you promised to give me another driving lesson after you get home from work.”
Lilly hasn’t gone off to college? He’s been zapped to the past? To before his girlfriend, Lucy? Before the pigs? He’s being given a second chance. To not take up with Lucy. Not destroy his family. The pigs are good. He gives Rose a long kiss.
“Easy,” Rose says. “I love your sentiment, but not your timing.”
He hugs Lilly.
“You’re weird this morning, Daddy. Don’t forget my lesson.”
“Do it right after work,” Rose says. “Remember we’re taking my new friend from the office out for a drink this evening. Lucy. You’ll love her.”
No! It’s the day he first meets Lucy. Richard recalls her tight skirt, feels that familiar rush of blood. Don’t give in this time, he tells himself. “Maybe I’ll pass, Rose. You go out with her.”
“Don’t be silly. I want you to meet her. I think Lucy and I are going to be great friends.”
After Rose and Lilly leave, Richard lingers in the kitchen. Maybe he could be more careful. Not get caught. No! He pictures Lucy’s breasts. Don’t! He finds a bottle of whiskey and swigs half. He mustn’t give in again no matter what he has to do. He opens the knife drawer.
TO BE CONTINUED
***
“Oh, no!” Zandy says as the closing credits roll. “Do think he’s going to cut off his —”
“You never know with these crazy earthlings,” his mate, Zobby, says. “This is the best series yet.”
Zandy clambers to his feet. “Think I’ll get ready for bed. I have an early appointment at the mud bath tomorrow.” He and Zobby touch snouts, their curly tails twirling with affection.
“I’ll wait here,” Zobby says.
“OK, Sweetie. I’ll be back out at midnight for us to stroke our cow.”
