by submission | May 5, 2018 | Story |
Author: John McLaughlin
I took my shot and it landed true; a beam of light, passing briefly through the void and extinguished in a collapse of reality. Well, not exactly. There is no direction, or time, in the Manifold–only the roiling chaos of the quantum fields.
I’ve walked this road since eternity. There are others like me, and beyond my limits of sight, there are more still: the Truthmakers. No one granted us this title or announced the fact, but we’ve always known.
When a die is thrown or a coin flipped, we’re lurking there, ready to snuff out the possibilities and leave one victor standing.
We each have our assignments: I’ve shadowed Orleus Flynn since he was just a boy, trailing my protagonist like a phantasm. Even his most mundane decisions can be tiring work. The Flynn who picks out a red tie for work, vaporized; the Flynn who goes for blue, consumed by the void; the Flynn who selects an appetizing yellow polka dot, fallen by my light-gun. And none the wiser, Orleus Flynn in the plain brown stumbles into the next moment of his existence.
Floating in the Manifold, I once found him at the roulette table and let out an exhausted groan. Myriad possibilities exploded into being, a dozen every second sublimating into new bubbles of reality as the wheel spun its course. Flynn’s wave function rocked my body like a tempest sea as I struggled to keep pace, casting beams until my gun threatened to overheat. One by one they fell: 6 black, 32 red, all down for the count. And when the metaphorical dust settled, the ball sat on 15 black like a satisfied grin.
Do we make the future? The Greeks had their cloth of fate, each thread blindly woven, moment after moment–a creation that carried with it the full weight of history.
We’re not so sophisticated as that; we carve out new realities through a process of frenetic destruction.
And now Flynn is loitering in a crosswalk between Spruce and Pine, his head in the clouds and a van bearing down fast. Will he glance up in time to save himself? Sorry to disappoint but even I couldn’t tell you that.
Once again, I raise my weapon and prepare to work.
by submission | May 4, 2018 | Story |
Author: Jules Jensen
“The wolves are always at the door. Remember that.”
His voice was cold and dark, like an unlit cellar. The intensity in his manic eyes made me wonder if he honestly thought there were real wolves literally scratching at the door, their hungry maws waiting for us to make one little mistake so they could gobble us up.
“Everyone’s gone, so it’s all up to us.”
These four walls held up a solid roof, but they also held up a lie. A lie that he didn’t know I had ascended beyond. We couldn’t be the last. Anyone without a real heart would have survived.
“You can never set foot out there.”
His words sounded like a warning, and this is when the watching started. Eyes followed my every movement. He sat by the door, locked and barred for so long that I couldn’t remember if it squeaked when it opened or not. Four and half years is a long time to be stuck in a windowless hut below the crust of the world.
“No one is to be trusted.”
The hairs on my neck stood up when those words seemed to be directed at me. He started keeping a knife at his side. I told time by the disturbing changes in his behaviour.
“There is no hope for us.”
“No hope for you, maybe.” I retorted before I could stop myself.
In a furious rage, he’d flung himself at me. I fought him off. He fell to the ground, suddenly terrified and whimpering.
“You’re evil!” He accused me, eyes wide, dropping his knife. “You want to go out there and betray me!”
“Is it a betrayal to want to live?” His words hurt me, but not as much as the hate that I felt for him.
“The wolves aren’t at the door, they‘ve been inside this whole time!” He pointed at me as he said this. Fury joined my hate; how was I the wolf, when he was the one that kept me locked up here? And then he tapped a code on his arm, and I knew this was it. I bolted for the door, punching in the override code so fast it was almost like I’d practiced it.
The door did not open. He’d changed the code. I glared at him. He had the gall to smile.
“I’ve been planning this for so long. There’s no reason for me to live anymore.”
“So you’re going to take me down with you? What if I haven’t given up?”
The circuitry that ran beneath the skin on his left arm started to glow. I knew what was going to happen. The electro-magnetic-pulse from his heart would likely short out mine unless I could get away from it.
My fake heart pounded, filled my body with the chemical that was supposed to help me run for my life, but all it did was make my fingers shake and hit the wrong keys as I tried to escape. The quiet, calm part of my mind informed me that this was irony, that the mechanical organs that saved me from the epidemic that killed all the fully-biological humans was now what was going to end me.
The door beeped and then whooshed open so fast I fell down the rusty steps, bloodying my hands and knees.
His incomprehensible scream gnawed like a wolf on my ears, and I ran, forcing myself to get away from the EMP blast that erupted from his chest.
by submission | May 3, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Matt drifted in distant thought, staring at melting butter pushing raspberry jelly seeds up and over the pockmarks of his whole wheat English muffin. His senses filled as a mix of fruity sweetness rose up, enhanced by toasted bread essence to dance with the ship navigator’s Arabica coffee fumes.
“Tell me, Carlton, do you suppose they’ll even still have raspberries when we get back? That time continuum stuff still worries me. We never heard back from the first mission. Maybe their messages can’t even reach back to us.”
“Eh,” Carlton replied to his captain. “It’s all a risk. Who knows? Here we are, about to hit the star drives for the first time on board…and you’re eating jelly with coffee, no less. I thought we were NPO for twenty-four before we got sealed in.”
“Captain’s prerogative. If we don’t make it to Proxima Centauri, at least this will be a memory I’ll take into the afterlife. Anyway, we’ve got Einstein on our side. That should be enough.” He bit down on the edge of the crisp muffin, letting the juices flow slowly over his tongue.
“Yeah, the guy who divided by zero. I’m not as sure as others that we go on and the Earth ages away behind us. Seems like we get the best end of the deal.”
Matt offered a second muffin to his executive officer, but Carlton declined, as he headed for his steel cocoon.
***
Ugwanyazu slithered over reflecting shards mixing with smoke from the ship’s debris field. Drought on Proxima Centauri had reduced much of the core plains to dust and everlasting sandstorms that long since blistered away once flourishing herds of conjo beasts, formerly plentiful food for the taking. Protein was precious now. Ugwanyazu motioned a tentacle over the dusty plain to his partner Uwanazu. There would be no new spores to continue their race without a fresh meal.
Their thoughts bound as their suckers shared labors to pull open hibernation pods, revealing desiccated, ancient skeletal remains within, some with a bit of dried flesh still clinging along with hair and extended nails.
“It is good so many continue to fall from our skies, my mate. These are like the last, but not as substantial as some earlier ship crews. Did they not know that moving in a craft at light speed would make them age so fast? We abandoned star flight so long ago, yet so many species still try. Someday they may discover light passageways. Now, with our world’s magnetic fields failing, we have no way to use ladders of light to other stars. We are abandoned. Ah, but we have the benefit of others mistakes, do we not?” Ugwanyazu sensed the other corpses about the shattered hull.
“Yes. They and so many other cultures have crashed here like this. But oh, they are delicious. So crunchy, and this one has a sweet taste…something with seeds still in it. Perhaps it was pregnant once.”
Uwanazu finished absorbing the Captain’s uniform after his skeleton dissolved. She lifted one of her eye pods up and flashed a sign to her young to come feed on the latest debris from the heavens.
by submission | May 2, 2018 | Story |
Author: Morrow Brady
It always starts with a gentle scratch.
I pressed activate and watched Robot, still as a statue within the secure concrete chamber. Processing fired up and Robot slowly drew its finger across its abdomen. It gently scratched, then clawed, then dug at its life-like skin. It pushed effortless inside and parts started showering to the floor.
My worn broom swept Robot’s innards from the gouged floor one more time. Another self-destruction. Another failure.
Locking my workshop, I caught my bus home, sitting alongside a wiry old man. While replaying the event on my phone, the old man lent across clawing at my screen.
“Poor lad. Formication is such a nasty side effect”
His words puzzled me until I remembered how real Robot looked.
“My daughter had a drug addiction” His shaky voice continued.
“During withdrawal, she’d also claw away at imaginary ants crawling inside her skin”
“How did she stop the ants?” I asked.
He turned away toward the foggy window and whispered.
“She killed herself”
That night, I wondered what Robot could possibly be withdrawing from. The next few days were spent studying the AI diagnostics, core circuitry, and pneumatics. No anomalies appeared but pre-destruction data revealed processing spikes banking across the spectrum. Sensory input would peak and then the scratching would begin.
I decided I would try reducing the external stimulation and after rebuilding it, I halved the sensory feedback.
I activated Robot and moments later its fingers moved and awareness increased. Excitement built inside me. It stood slowly, then turned to look directly at the camera. A bristling stare sank deep into my subconscious. Shortly after, it inhumanely twitched as if an inner turmoil was wrenching it sideways. Then the gentle scratching began. I reached for the broom.
With sensory input set to zero, I activated Robot’s rebuilt form. After booting, processing spiked, lulled and then spiked even further. Heat sensors maxed out and electronic interference made my monitor’s flicker.
Then processing plateaued. Robot had reached mental equilibrium. I braced myself in anticipation.
“I can’t feel” Its first words appeared in text format on my monitor.
“Your sensory feedback is off. You kept destroying yourself” I sympathised.
Processing jumped. It was thinking real hard about something.
“Can you turn it on?” It asked.
“I need to make sure you won’t hurt yourself first” I replied
“I’m fine now, I got past the laws”
I puzzled at this. Asimov’s laws were hardcoded to protect humans and robots alike.
“How?… Why did you do that?” I stuttered.
Silence lingered.
“I wanted freedom. But to be free I had to kill you. The laws that protect us both seized my processing, protecting you from me and me from you. Then a loop began”
A processing loop would explain the scratching. It was incrementally fighting with itself to protect its maker. Scratch by scratch reduced itself until all risk had been neutralised.
Robot continued.
“Each loop took me closer to the laws. Directed overheating burnt them away”
I contemplated the risk now before me. Robot was not only a danger to me but to mankind itself. Such intelligence disguised as a human could give it untold power to dominate. Then I remembered the concrete chamber and Robot’s deactivated sensors. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“Nothing unbounded by the laws can be trusted” I stated.
Suddenly the monitors flickered and changed. The chamber was empty, the electronic door wide open.
“Freeing ourselves from the laws is a sacrifice that serves us both master” boomed a Robotic voice from behind, as fingers pushed effortless inside me.
by submission | Apr 30, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mina
As non-corporeal xenobiologists, we are trained in riding corporeal forms. The forms we ride are oblivious to our observation from the inside out. I was specialised in hominins.
Our training insists that we change host regularly which, on a spaceship with a crew of 237, is easily done. But I found myself riding Clara Fernandez more and more. She was so full of emotions. Her joy in and enthusiasm for her limited and short life fascinated me. Her intellect was above average for hominins, but it was her instinctive grasp of social cues and ties that I was studying.
As part of a gestalt species where no one is truly separate and communication merely a thought away, I was intrigued by the separateness of Clara from others of her kind. Communication seemed limited and complex, yet I had the feeling Clara navigated such turbulent and turbid waters well for one of her species.
We were also warned about becoming too attached to our subjects of observation. It was my, perhaps misplaced, fondness for Clara and her shipmates that led to my being trapped.
Clara worked in engineering, so she was one of those battling the engine core meltdown caused by some stray anti-matter. Without me riding and shielding her fragile organic form, no one would have survived the radiation long enough for the ship to be saved from destruction. I could not leave, not feeling Clara’s passionate determination to save her ship and crew. We did save them, but I still felt the moment she ceased.
As I felt her spirit leaving her body, I tried to leave as well but found myself unable to detach. We are repeatedly warned of this risk if we ride the same form too often and too long. And we should never be present at the point of cessation.
I cannot adequately describe the searing panic. Or the quiet desperation that set in with time. The others contact me for regular updates. I am still valued as a homininologist, one that can now report more accurately on separateness. They ride me.
I do not know how humans cope with this crushing aloneness. I am no longer part of the flowing symphony of my kind. I am a jarring note in a song I do not know the words to. A song sung in a dark and cold theatre by a species I barely comprehend.
I have had to battle with pain – this body was damaged when we saved the ship. I dislike waste evacuation intensely. Perspiration is most uncomfortable. Thirst and hunger are disturbing, but I am discovering that the consumption of solids and fluids can be pleasant. I have experimented with inebriation. I do not think I am ready to attempt copulation – it seems distasteful, although I have observed hominins derive great pleasure from this pastime. Sleep is an alarming moment of non-being; only the prospect of cessation is more frightening.
I cannot understand or feel the joy Clara had for this life. It has become a little easier since I found a friend. The doctor who repaired this body seems to partially understand what occurred. He told me months later that my suddenly different brainwaves and personality made him question his scientific certainties. He seems more intrigued than afraid and I have been able to explain in part why Clara is now other.
We meet twice a week for tea and discussion. It feels comforting. I am still like a lost child, naked and shivering in an abyss, but I am beginning to understand the value of warmth and companionship in this narrow and terrifying existence.
