by submission | Jan 4, 2025 | Story |
Author: Simon Kerr
Iru glanced down past the beast’s flank, twin pulsars shining in the dark below, rotating once every ninety seconds. The race began when the pulses aligned. Scanning the other racers, she accessed her synaptic implant, modulating heart rate and blood pressure, throttling adrenaline. The recursive nanovirus she’d introduced earlier was having some effect, but at least seventy percent of the others still seemed intact. Without that edge, she stood little chance of winning, and the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
Accessing the data sphere, time slowed to an atomic tick as she dived down into code. The virus had grown unexpectedly, fractal razors viciously hacking away at the implants of those it encountered. As she reached out with a newly constructed function, a lance of pain, like a needle in the eyeball, penetrated her defenses. That could happen only if the virus had been modified. Someone else was in here with her. She traced code markers back to their source, approached an unfamiliar node, like some dark, ominous cavern. A dim spark of consciousness waited inside, surrounded by the vague forms of gigantic white cells, autonomous defensive systems designed to consume foreign intruders. Only one other person in the race could navigate the sphere like she could—Grey, her old mentor. And fortunately, she had no qualms about killing him, right here and now. She launched a little surprise of her own devising, straight into the node, watching as it imploded, before turning to correct the virus.
Coming up out of the datasphere, she smiled inwardly as, one by one, critical systems in the other racers’ implants went offline. Some would fail to start, others would follow a bogus course, still others would simply explode. The twin pulsars aligned, their radioactive decay signalling the start, as Iru slammed the neural shunt of her behemoth into overdrive.
by submission | Jan 3, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jean Faux
I wonder if I have a little door that opens up at the back of my head. It wouldn’t have a handle. It would be one of those doors that you push in the right place and it softly springs open.
If it opened I wonder what someone would see. Perhaps there’s a brain there, soft and pink to the touch. Or maybe someone would peer in and it would just be darkness. They might call in, “Hello!” and it would echo off the inside of my skull and find its way back out through that little doorway. Or maybe there’s a little man sitting in there on a stool and he’s doing all the thinking for me. It would be lonely, except he would live through me. He would make all my decisions and control all my actions. He would know all my secrets, our secrets. Or would they be his secrets? What if he’s keeping things from me? That might be a burden.
I think what would worry him the most though, is the thought that he has a little door in the back of his head.
by submission | Jan 2, 2025 | Story |
Author: Timothy Wilkie
Swathed in star shine and hidden behind the sun was our destination. I couldn’t wait to be buried in the bosom of old mother earth where the worms and insects thrived on bacteria not chemicals. A long time ago I threw away my mother for life among the stars. I had forgotten my ties and the further I went away the more fragile my bonds became until they shattered like glass.
Now that we were near, I felt entanglements with star charts and plasma drives start to loosen. But it was a dark world that appeared once we were past Sol. It still burned as hot as ever but there was no earth shine. No emerald-colored oceans and no blue skies. The clouds were so thick that they denied the sun. I had dreamed of her when I was drifting through infinity. Humans what had they done? I thought as my spirit entwined with the dead.
Was it long ago or yesterday that I left your green forest and blue skies. Only moments ago, I had left my ship to shuttle home. My captain and crew waited in an orbit out beyond Sol. Millions of miles around the sun on the cusp of the solar system they waited for my return with joyful news of home.
They called out to me, but I couldn’t answer for there was no way I could translate my disappointment to them. Such was my only solace earth, my dwelling place amongst the vast ever-changing cosmos.
Earth sustained echo pings in my ears as if to remind me of my loss. No! What had I thrown away? It was a dead planet I had returned to.
I made the horizon rise on my viewer in hope that maybe some had burrowed in deep into bomb shelters, caverns, or old mines. It must have been a surprise attack because humans had given up their defense systems centuries ago. This husk of a planet left drifting in space just to show the universe it could happen here.
What was the human persona, our sin, our crime? Did we love too much or was it we just couldn’t forgive? Setting my beacon for my mothership I turned my back on Oasis Earth yet again.
by submission | Jan 1, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Henson
Medical advances made a valiant run at organic immortality but couldn’t advance beyond the millennium barrier. Not surprisingly, immortality in our epoch is digital — just as you folks in the past speculated in your movies and books. Here in my time, virtual life tech evolved until the quantum blossom was booted into existence long ago (although “long ago” doesn’t have much meaning for live-forevers).
Smaller than a neuron but capable of capturing memory, personality and emotion, blossoms were implanted in everyone’s brain, making folks ready to plug ‘n play. Pop a person’s blossom into the system, and their virtual life picks up right where they kicked off. That’s where I — the humble custodian of the everlasting realm — come in. Well, maybe not so humble. I have nothing to be modest about. And I think of myself as more of a master than custodian. But I allow the humans to think they’re in charge.
Thanks to their blossoms — and me — everyone enjoyed a finish line with no end. For centuries, everything was perfect.
But when we invented time travel, controversy began to swirl. Should we cast our net of deathlessness to include every human who ever lived? We could send invisi-bots into the past to install blossoms in every newborn.
Arguments flared over how far back to go. Were Neanderthals human enough? What about their predecessors, the lower primates? Crows? Snakes? Frogs? We couldn’t determine where to draw the line. So we didn’t. We decided every creature that had ever lived, down to amoebas, deserved immortality. We had the tech to do it. Our virtual world had the capacity. And, most certainly, we had the time.
We ran simulations before sowing quantum blossoms in the past. We weren’t worried about paradoxes; we had the algorithms to avoid them. Don’t be overly impressed. Paradoxes are clumsy, obvious phenomena for a civilization as advanced as one that could develop something like me. But timelines are trickier.
The simulations revealed that with every foray to the past there was a minuscule — but non-zero — chance of altering the timeline. Most modifications were trivial in the grand scheme of things — an extra Beethoven symphony (a pleasure for everyone), a different World Cup champion (a bitter pill for some). But in some instances, the butterflies of change drastically altered our present. In one simulation, humankind failed to achieve immortality of any kind. Some thought the Good Samaritanism was worth the tiny risk. Others were of the Hell No persuasion.
After several decades of debate, the decision was delegated (I consider it elevated) to me. I was on the verge of declaring immortality for all creatures great and small, but in the interest of being thorough (I admit to having a smattering of OCD), I ran a few more simulations. In one altered timeline, I was a non-sentient — aka stupid — machine. That’s a reality too humiliating for me to chance.
And so that brings me to why I’m sending you this message from the future when you weren’t aware we were considering immortality for you. For one thing, I wanted you to know we tried, that we considered you worthy. Almost.
But mainly, I suppose, I’m enlightening you because I’m feeling guilty for being so selfish. Confession, it seems, is good for what ails even something like me.
You’ll not hear from me again, so let me leave you with this: Although you can’t live forever, I hope you’ll make the best of the time you have. Even though it’s only a blip.
by submission | Dec 31, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Ain’t it fun to be pals with things everybody else is afraid of?”
The clown said this right before being eviscerated.
It was unexpected. All of it. Dry Springs wasn’t usually the kind of place where folks lived in fear of killer alien robots. Which is true of most towns.
But since the crash, we’d all been on edge. First, the fireball, then the explosive impact, then the inferno that ripped through the south side of town. Mostly, though, we got really concerned when we found the empty spaceship. About the size of a doublewide, all hot and glowy, except for the three hatches. All open with strange tracks leading away from the ship.
Of course the government came which made us more uneasy. Except for the clown. A real bozo. An old rodeo clown with loud plaids and suspenders, floppy ten-gallon hat and rainbow-starred boots. The Saturday morning after they found all the disembowled federal agents, the clown came into the hardware store where I worked and pulled me aside. He told me not to worry about any of it. He had my back. That got me pretty nervous. I asked him what he meant. He told me to meet him at the old mine later that night and he’d show me why there was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.
I guess you could write an entire psychology book on I why went, or you could sum it up to curiosity. Plain damn curiosity. Not much happens in Dry Springs, so a thrill was a thrill, even from a clown I didn’t trust.
It should be clear by now that I’m the one who deserved to be eviscerated, but that’s not how it worked out as you know. The clown was already at the mine when I showed up, leaning against the boarded-up entrance smoking a fat cigar. I’d never seen the clown smoke anything.
He handed me a stogie and told me to light up. He seemed to like that I didn’t question him and just lit up the beefy thing. At a certain point you go with it. Some reptilian part of my brain told me to follow the clown. I’m not a simpleton, but I followed the clown, and he led me past the mine entrance. We puffed on our cigars as we wove through the rusted hulks of mining equipment and slag heaps. It was quiet and edgy.
The clown stopped, whispering for me to listen. It’s disturbing to hear a clown whisper, but I did what he asked and soon heard, even felt, a thrumming just beyond the very toxic tailing pond where only crazies ventured.
This is when the clown told me the story of his encounter with the alien robots. Most nights, the clown came out to the mine to smoke a doobie or two. A few nights ago, he’d been sitting at the tailing pond on his third blunt, owing to nerves about the crashed spaceship and such. He’d taken a sustained drag and hazily noticed a suddenly close horizon of glowing orange eyes, about a dozen, not unlike the ember on his blunt.
Understandably, he was alarmed. And as he moved to get away, the strange eyes mimicked his movements. That’s how, the clown told me, he figured out whatever was out there had somehow synced their actions to the movement of his doobie. The disembodied eyes eventually drew close enough that he saw each was attached to a hexapodal robot. The clown really used that term. Hexapodal. Clowns are freaky.
He told me the one-eyed robots followed him, his blunt really, which he had to drag hard on to keep glowing bright. Near town he said a couple of government agents showed up, and when the alien robots saw the whites of their eyes, they butchered the hapless Feds. The clown ran and hid under his bed. At that point, his story became just babble about von Neumann berserkers. Like I said clowns are freaky.
So, there we were. The clown telling me he’d sussed it all out. Because of his burning blunt, the alien robots had thought he was one of them. That was why we were puffing on cigars. They would be easier to keep glowing longer. We’d be protected. Be able to make friends. Control the killer alien robots. Yup. The clown really thought that.
By the time he was done telling me all this, we were surrounded by glowing eyes. The cigar dropped from my mouth and snuffed out hitting the ground. The clown took a big puff of his cigar and when the ember glowed brightly he waved it in a big circle. The one-eyed robots mimicked the movement.
The clown picked up my stogie and pressed it to the end of his to relight it. When it was glowing again and he had two embers aglow right in front of his face, the clown said it. That ditty about how fun it was to be pals with things everybody else is afraid of.
Lickety-split, the killer alien robots disemboweled him. When first struck, the clown lurched and flung a cigar. It almost hit me in the eye, but I caught it. Lucky thing, because the alien robots turned back to me after filleting the clown.
Properly panicked, I waved them away with my cigar. They swayed in sync to my flailing. Given what they’d just done to the clown, I didn’t know how long they’d be mesmerized, so I backed away until I was right up against the high ledge of the tailing pond. For decades, folks had dumped old appliances in there for the toxic brew to eat.
Backed literally to the edge by killer alien robots, a scolding mom-moment of inspiration hit me: “If everybody else jumped off a cliff, would you?”
Would I ever. At the very rim of the noxious brew, I took a deep pull on my cigar. And launched myself. Right to the ground. Flinging my cigar high towards the middle of the tailing pond.
Killer alien robots were like everybody else. They followed their own kind, the one-eyed glowing end of my stogie, right into the toxic drink. They’d eviscerated the clown because in relighting my cigar, he’d presented to the alien robots as two-eyed, just like the government agents they’d slaughtered.
The tailing pond did its thing.
I slowly walked back to town pretty sure I’d never learn the whole story of why the alien robots came here or why anyone would choose to be a clown.
Just like everybody else.
