by submission | Nov 23, 2018 | Story |
Author: Thomas Desrochers
This mess I’m in, it’s kinda my fault. You see, I was hanging down at Louie’s, yackin’ with the other breadheads in the back room, and Mack comes in with this smirk like he’s scored big. I asked him what the deal was and he took me aside and told me, “Hey, Vinnie, buddy, I cracked it, see? I figured out how to grab all of somebody’s information, history, secrets, details, whatever you like, I got it figured out. Total access!”
I asked him, “Mack, you jerkin’ me around?”
Mack just laughed, wrapped an arm across my shoulders. “Vinnie, buddy,” he said, “I’ve got it figured out, I’ve got the hardware, but you know as well as me that I can’t go puttin’ boards in my own head. Let’s make a deal, Vinnie. I test it on you, you get first access. Total information!”
Well. Sounded like a good deal, right? That’s the dream right there. Knowledge is power, like the boys in the chip shops on King Street are always saying, and Mack was offering me all of it.
“Alright,” I told him. “But you gotta take care of me, you hear?”
Mack clapped me on the back. “Vinnie boy, this is gonna be the coolest thing, you know that? This works, we’ll make billions.”
I mean, it really sounded good.
Too good to be true, even.
Well, I’ll give Mack credit. The thing worked flawlessly, and he’s a regular carpenter when it comes to integrating breadboards in the ‘ol cortex.
Well, one problem: I had no control over it. If I saw a person, Mack’s wonderboard would put their entire life in my head whether I wanted it or not. That stopped being funny when I woke up and saw Mack – and screamed. “Well, Vinnie,” he grinned, “Minor technical issues pave the way forward.”
I started to object, but he threw me out on the street. If Mack’s whole life was a little much, think about what it was like being on a crowded street still fuzzy from the anesthetics. Complete overload just about sums it up, instantly bombarded by… well, all of it. I mean, jeeze-louise – the things these people got up to!
I passed out, then came to in an alley. This cop was standing over me with this look on her face like I’d done something real smart.
“A little early for booze,” she said sweetly.
I shook my head trying to focus. “You know,” I said. “I don’t think it’s normal to spend that much on deodorant.”
She wasn’t too hot on me knowing her deepest secrets, but lucky for me her partner stepped into the scene. “He’s not wrong, Beatrice. You spend a ridiculous amount of money on deodorant. But… How did you know that?”
“And you,” I slurred. “Twelve cats in one apartment?”
Beatrice cackled, then tapped her beat-stick where Mack had been cutting. “He’s a breadhead boy, Claire. One of those hooligans always putting homegrown tech in each other.”
Claire narrowed her eyes, chewed her lip. “What sort of screwy thing did you put in there?”
I shrugged. “I can’t know everything, I guess.”
Lucky for me Claire and Beatrice knew a good thing when they saw it. They got me home, got me cleaned up. Every now and then they bring me to see a perp and we fix ‘em better than any black site. Their bosses love it, and the three of us don’t mind cleaning out these thugs’ stashes.
And Mack… Well, he’ll be getting a visit from some soon-to-be detectives. After all, competition is bad for business.
by submission | Nov 22, 2018 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Micah stood up straight, pushed back his hat and flashed his brightest smile at the tourist taking his picture. They always placed their family members on either side of him and made sure they got the heavily forested mountains in the background. Or sometimes they wanted Micah and their kin to stand before the large, weathered wooden National Forest sign. Being a personable, photogenic Forestry Service employee, Micah always obliged.
A picture is worth a thousand words, but even better, it is evidence that you were there—wherever “there” is. So Micah spent most of his days, of late, posing and smiling with strangers and their relatives. This sunny afternoon was no different.
“So, Ranger Mick, has there been an uptick in visitors since the deregulation? Speculation was places like this would be flooded with—”
“Flooded with friendly visitors, yes,” Micah finished for the pale, pudgy tourist dressed in fluorescent blue and yellow plaid. And those same visitors nearly drowned local businesses with their devalued currency, he added to himself. Deregulating time travel was one thing, but lifting restrictions on the number of travelers each month—that had wreaked havoc on the past. His present.
“And it’s Micah, not Mick,” he added delicately.
Tomorrow-landers—that’s how Micah and his friends thought of these tourists—they all wanted to visit the past, where there were still vast expanses of uninhabited, pollution-free land. Where they’d find clean air, fresh water, food that didn’t come out of a factory spigot, fit women, virile men, and real dogs. Micah worried what the future must be like if so many people there were in such a rush to leave it behind. These tourists were forbidden to talk about their own time, lest they alter the course of the future. But weren’t they altering that course just by being here? Still, the tourists couldn’t help but let details of their lives slip, and what Micah overheard was depressing.
“Treat them as if they are visitors from one of our urban coastal city centers,” the head of the Forestry Service Workers Union had instructed in a memo released last month. “They speak our language, so it will be easy to converse with them. They are curious, though not always polite. But you must be polite and accommodating at all times! Our future depends on it!”
“Hey, Ranger Mick, one more pic for the scrapbook,” the blubbery tourist demanded, raising his camera up to his little pig eye. “Yeah, now Bettina, how about you sidle up next to Ranger Mick, and put your arm around him. That’s great! Now, look into each other’s eyes—”
The young woman reached her flabby arm around Micah’s trim waist and pulled him closer to her. “It’s just like fate!” she said with breathless excitement.
“This is a bit much,” Micah said with nervous laughter, as he attempted to gently pry himself free of her surprisingly strong grip.
“Nah, not for the strapping buck whose going to be my baby’s daddy!” The young woman licked her chapped lips and pulled him in closer to her lumpy frame. “Vacation’s over, Papa—I found the one I want!”
“What?” Micah squeaked, sure that he’d misheard.
“Smile!” The camera snapped. “That’s one for the baby book!” the tourist in plaid sang out with unbridled glee.
by submission | Nov 21, 2018 | Story |
Author: E.M. McCarthy
I shop here.
There are better places to stop and shop, better prices, better inventory, but this place reminds me of the good old days, and they replicated the look of the old stores pretty well too. Same bright lights, same late hours, same rows of glass cases filled with pre-packaged foods.
As a kid, I’d stop by a convenience store and buy a can of soda pop, then on the way home, I’d pop the tab and drink it down, feet pounding the pavement, while sunlight streamed down onto my sweaty face. And I mean the real sweat, forced by heat from a strong sun.
A robo clerk stops by me, gives me an eye scan, then moves on. A bag of dried fruit is still out of my price range due to shipping costs. I settle for a pre-packaged meal, third time this week. We grow tomatoes native, so everyone eats sauce and noodles.
This particular store holds a special memory for me. It’s where I purchased my son. Right there in aisle three, I saw him in the newly installed embryo kiosk. I read his description detailing things like his eye color, his intelligence. There was something special about him. It was more than science. Looking through the glass, I fell in love with him. I knew that all I was missing here was a family.
I made the best decision of my life, to purchase him on the spot. The eight-month wait for him to arrive gave me time to file the appropriate paperwork. They don’t let just anyone have a kid. The usual questions had to be answered: job, education level, income, ability to pay. But, with a little luck and a large bribe, it worked out.
What’s missing here are the holidays. I know they don’t “do” holidays.
We need a holiday. It should be Christmas. Christmas has the joy we’re lacking. I can put up an LED image of a tree on our living room wall at least.
Manny would like that. He’s the right age for a train.
They’re selling trains on aisle seven. I need to think about it after seeing the cost. The computer program toy train is pretty realistic and the apartment is cramped.
I pay for my purchases using my phone, adjust my gloves, then push the button on my suit to close my helmet around my head before I venture through the two doors and leave the artificial atmosphere.
This store has no connector tunnel, so I walk outside. The charm of a brief walk to the shuttle ramp is something I cherish. Perhaps I’m old school, but all the indoor stuff gets old.
The night is dark. So dark I fear it. I leave behind the convenience store’s bright lights for the wilderness of Mars.
Then I see them, snowflakes floating in the air above the lighted store.
I replay a song inside my head about a silent night. For one moment, as I shut my eyes, it’s Christmas again.
A red glow from the space station forms above me. In the moment, I miss home. I miss the smell of leaves, the sight of trees. The next generation doesn’t even know what those are, or why they are important.
But I will tell my son. He’ll know. Maybe he’ll be the one to develop a method to grow a tree, and then he’ll see what Christmas can be again.
by submission | Nov 18, 2018 | Story |
Author: Thomas Desrochers
The most popular topic of all was always
Love.
That was how neuro-sims came to the forefront of entertainment, you know. Plug in and a skilled corporate smartiste can have you feeling all that nervous giddiness your stomach borrows from your junk when you’re in
Love.
The magic, and danger, of neuro-sims is how fast they are: an hour in a neuro-sim is a minute in the real world. You can fall in love a thousand times over a weekend. Who needs family, or friends, or lovers, when they have
Love?
I’ll admit, I never went for the popular “most ‘lived’” titles. Back in the day homebrew neuro-sims outnumbered the professional productions 10:1 and there was content for whatever niche you like, ranging from the benign to the truly disturbed. That was how I ended up in possession of the last sim I ever tried.
I should start with this: the author disabled user over-rides.
There I was. The woman I love on the ground, seizing. She’s never done this before; I’m terrified. Jump, then, to the appointment where the doctor points out the brain tumor on the scan. Even as I drown in the mix of emotions – the dread, fear, and resolve – the sleeplessness and anxiety of the weeks since the seizure trickle in.
More jumping. Life, absorbed days at a time. Camping out in the chair by her bed after the first surgery, holding her hand and arguing with the nurses for more painkillers every time she wakes up screaming. The morning after discharge: she tries to make bacon and stares as it burns. I ask her why she doesn’t take it out, but she doesn’t know.
Another seizure at two in the morning. Six weeks of radiation therapy. Countless nights next to her unable to sleep, wondering when the next seizure might hit. Waking every morning to her indomitable spirit and a terrible unease in my gut.
Years pass.
A shock scan. The doctor can’t hide his reaction at how quickly it’s grown. A whole week spent arguing because she doesn’t understand basic things and I don’t yet understand that she doesn’t understand. I wake up at one in the morning to find her making coffee, getting ready for work that doesn’t start until eight.
She can’t work. Trouble using her hands, walking, eating. The weeks blur together – I honestly forget what I experienced and what I was made to remember experiencing. The ability to talk is wrung out of her like water from a rag, until she points at me Christmas morning and says the last thing she’ll ever say:
“Love.”
Every hour of every day spent taking care of her: she can’t talk, can’t eat, can’t use the bathroom, everything stripped away until I even have to smile for her. Hard work, long hours, punctuated by quiet mornings: the two of us in bed with the sun on our faces while we hold hands and just look at each other. She’s broken down piece by piece until all that’s left is her intense, burning will to live, and as the sun rises one morning her breathing slows until, with one last gasp, that too is crushed.
It took my body a week to recover from lying on the floor so long. I still think about it in the quiet moments of my life, that dodgy second-hand love. Being forced to never shy away from that awful reality hollowed me out.
It’s probably good someone stepped in and regulated the market, not that it gives me closure.
Unsettling, unsatisfying, nothing like a professional first kiss.
Love!
by submission | Nov 17, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alex Z. Salinas
There was once a creature much like a man who lived on a planet all alone. He was carbon-based, drank water, and received nutrients from luscious plant life born from fertile soil. Because the creature was always left to his thoughts, and possessed what you’d call higher-order thinking abilities, he, in approximately 50 earth years, discovered the meaning of life. Yes, in roughly half a human lifetime by 21st century standards, he identified what it was his purpose was on that vast, lonely planet. His discovery filled him with joy. He-without-a-name—for there was no need for him to assume an identity—lived another 200 earth years in solitude, his mood only affected natural weather events and illnesses associated with change in temperature. Only once, on a rather warm night, did the creature have a nightmare. He dreamed of another him. In his nightmare, his twin was identical to him in every way except one, and he, recognizing this in the eyes of his twin, stood paralyzed in terror before his other. When he woke up, his skin hot and sweaty, he was relieved to find his world as it was. He soon forgot about his nightmare and went on with his life.
Upon his death, the discovery of the meaning of his life perished alongside with him. His body decayed into the fertile soil, and eventually, traces that he had ever existed ceased to exist.
***
There’s a planet impossibly distant from earth where hyperintelligent creatures with mirror-bodies roam. They communicate by absorbing light from their giant red sun, processing the energy into uniquely coded data, then transmitting it decoded to each other via reflection. This occurs soundlessly. The transmission of information—their language—also serves as their food source, supplying their bodies with necessary nutrients. The inherent flaw in these creatures’ design, as is true with two mirrors facing each other, is light reflected between them gets dissolved into oblivion. The particles scatter seemingly until they disappear. This means the creatures’ thoughts fragment and distort until their original content is lost entirely. Think “the telephone game.” Eventually, the mirror creatures, through the act of communication, are driven mad. As they age, they develop increasingly distrustful, violent, and suicidal ideas of their world. Since they require communication for nourishment, there’s no cure for their deadly madness. Life on their planet is brutal and unhappy. Brutally unhappy.
***
Humans and their love—love: the so-called boundless driver of their action. But what your kind has gained with love it has also lost in flesh, for you manipulate. Your proneness to attach to others—to philosophies, objects, and gods—seems to define your purpose. All leading to slaughter. I’ve noted your behavior mirrors the mirror creatures, in that dispersion of your language occurs daily. But unlike the mirror creatures, your communication is not a food source. Rather, it’s a choice. Luckily, for your sake, the mirror creatures don’t know about this.
So to answer your question, the meaning of life, as you can guess, boils down to a matter of space, angle, and insertion point. I’ve told you enough for you to draw your own conclusions, so be on your way.
But one last thing. The difference between prosperity and destruction, in your case, walks a tightrope. An infant’s breath can tip it over.
Whether you remain or not, I can’t tell. Either way, I’ll still be here.
