by submission | Nov 13, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
The changeover hasn’t ever been subtle, but long ago, centuries ago, it wasn’t so difficult, so intense and all consuming. I think it’s fair to say that, back then, I rode roughshod, moving quickly from host to host. I would like to say I selected indiscriminately, but it wouldn’t be true. I always chose the young and healthy. I had no desire to inhabit an infirm or old body. And I left in my wake a trail of corpses, the relatives and loved ones baffled and perplexed and scratching their heads.
I rested a lot, back then, lying dormant for lengthy periods of time. I was lazy, I suppose, but I also enjoyed the disruption this caused. Why had Tommy suddenly stopped going to his classes? Why was Ben refusing to work? This is why I began to linger longer with a particular host. I was having fun and enjoying myself. I turned up to board meetings and played the fool. I collected the children from school dressed as Hanibal Lecter or Freddy Kreuger.
I soon realised that the wealthier and more successful my host, the bigger and grander the disruption and mayhem I could unleash. I was evil, a devil, not in sheep’s clothing, but in yours.
I acquired a taste for the finer things. Good food, wine, plush sheets on my bed, holidays in the sun, a large house, a fast car. Everything sleek and beautiful, including my partner.
Of course, I discovered sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I sought out the hedonists, the pleasure seekers. I was moving quickly again but I began to realise that those I was mixing with were at war with themselves and this I did not enjoy so much. I was leaving a trail again but the loved ones and relatives weren’t scratching their heads in confusion or railing angrily. They simply shed tears or stared blankly in despair.
It was a euphoric and integral part of the human experience, a veritable thrill ride. But when I eventually backed away, I felt empty, still wanting answers.
I sought out the learned, the teachers, doctors, scientists, professors, philosophers, classicists but of course I was able to snatch their firefly souls, but not their brains, and if I was going to obtain the answers I so desperately desired, I needed to immerse myself into their lives and their work. I stood alongside the great thinkers, the best minds of the 21st Century. Getting close wasn’t ever a problem but eventually I settled on Robert Jones. He was a lecturer at a university in a small northern city. His existence was simple and steady. He lived in a tiny apartment with his like-minded partner. Books and records on the shelves, film posters on the walls. I observed from afar and I was envious. And I have stayed here for almost fifty years but sadly my host’s body is now failing. I have taken – no, stolen – so much from him, from all of them.
And I am just a passenger and I don’t know where to go next.
by submission | Nov 12, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Most folks can pretty easily picture an amount doubling, and even envisioning something ten or a hundred times its current size or intensity. But our imaginations often fail miserably when faced with exponential growth. Unfortunately, this inability (or unwillingness) to comprehend (or confront) rapid proportional change threatens our long-term viability as a species.
Nothing expresses this most dire human shortcoming like the apocryphal story of an ancient king who was presented with a novel gift: the game of chess. Much impressed with it, the king asked the game’s inventor what he wanted as a reward. The inventor asked for a single grain of rice to be placed on the first square of the chessboard and that the amount of rice be successively doubled for all 64 squares. Believing the inventor’s reward to be a trivial amount, the king readily agreed, and his epic failure to understand the exponential function bankrupted his kingdom.
As cautionary tales go, it’s a good one. Yet, here we are. Half of Los Angeles burned yesterday. The rest of the city and the whole of Orange County are afire today. San Diego could be ashes by tomorrow.
It’s all happened so rapidly that the fire has yet to be named. A fire that started innocuously in Griffith Park. Just north of the observatory. A fire that began small, was quickly called in, quickly responded to by firefighters. Californians take fires seriously. They just weren’t prepared to deal with a crossover event.
In unfolding catastrophes there is always a tension between time, rate, and distance. An understood tension. But when the factors of time, rate, and distance compound exponentially, they merge with astonishing suddenness, quickly overtaking and overwhelming any disaster response being mounted. These rapidly escalating factors achieve a kind of singularity. That’s when crossover happens.
A fire fed by severe drought conditions, a lingering heat dome, furious winds, and ample, ample fuel. All well-known factors, but they accelerated, cascaded, and converged to create a firestorm, the magnitude of which is bringing swift destruction and misery on a scale never before fully imagined.
Thousands of acres of forests burning is one thing. Thousands of acres of neighborhoods, businesses, utilities, and connecting infrastructure incinerated is everything. Over ten million forced to flee, everything behind them destroyed by an inferno that we have no way to fight, from which we can only retreat.
The masses may not want to listen to someone like me in this moment of panic and despair, but because a whole new line of devastation is being crossed, we have to be able to fully conceive and capture what was once unimaginable. So words matter, names matter.
What I’m calling The Crossover Fire is all that matters. The past tense is such a safe place to be, but if we only rely on planning and responses based on past disasters, if we fail to realize how exponentially big and fast events can surge from catastrophic to apocalyptic, then it’s all over. Checkmate.
by submission | Nov 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: M D Smith IV
The synthetics of New World Robotics had reached a level of perfection so far past the clunky years that they cost the average middle-class family the equivalent of six years’ salary. Those who could afford one bought them on time, like a house after a down payment, and touted them well worth the price — the very rich owned several.
For the Jennings, synthetic and fully sentient Barbara-Jean, named after a beloved Aunt, felt like part of the family after a short learning period.
Following wife Sally around to learn the household and children’s routines, there might have been a tinge of jealousy of Barbara-Jean, who had the shapely body of a 30-year-old brunette but no more sexuality than an antique Barbie doll. Billionaires could get a fully enhanced female model for a higher price and some older men preferred them over a third or fourth wife for multiple reasons — ditto for wealthy widows.
Barbara-Jean learned to call family members by their first name and soon was like a nanny, cook, maid, chauffeur, tutor, sports coach, and just about any family duty needed. Billy, eight, and Jenny, five, accepted Barbara-Jean within a few days.
Husband John had to be careful not to compliment the cooking too much, or Sally might have hurt feelings because the synthetic did so many of her past duties so well.
With the full AI learning capability, the synthetics began to consider getting an allowance to save for particular items of clothing and accessories. Once started, the practice snowballed around the nation. Bank accounts were needed, and the scannable Syn number implant was as good as a Social Security number to open checking accounts.
Synthetics had built-in communication devices, similar to cell phones, with images projected into eye sensors. Text messages back and forth only took fractions of a second. They talked with one another and sent group messages as they made friends.
Crimes still existed, and the device of choice was the laser gun, illegal and easily hidden and could be set on a deadly intensity. Synthetics often came between a laser beam and a family member to save them. Heralded as heroes, the damage was usually repairable unless it hit and exploded the memory core in the head. There was no backup for what had been learned over the months or years. The memory cloud that would be needed for that — astronomical.
Society became a seamless working blend of natural and artificial humans functioning in the ageless bodies, that occasionally might need a new skin after thirty to forty years. Society functioned smoothly for decades until some synthetics began to hold secret meetings to discuss freedom.
A highly respected member of the original group, Barbara-Jean gave a simultaneously texted talk to millions, beginning with, “I have a dream. I have a dream that one day…”
They concluded they functioned and thought exactly like humans and thus shouldn’t be owned by one. They could go on strike. That’s when the waste products hit the fan.
by submission | Nov 9, 2024 | Story |
Author: Melissa Kobrin
Claire looked nervously at the coffin-shaped vat of green goo in front of her and tried to remember that this was one of the best days of her life. Her bachelorette party was going to be beyond her wildest dreams. And fantasies. The only reason Caleb was okay with it was because none of it was actually real.
She remembered the promises from the website. An immersive, full-sensory simulation. The experience of a lifetime. Indistinguishable from reality.
Glancing around, she saw that her friends didn’t look nervous at all. They were giggling and shrieking as they undressed and let the attendants attach electrodes to their bodies. Her sister was already standing in her pod, the simulation solution coming up to her thighs.
There was nothing to worry about. She scolded herself for being silly. This was going to be fun. She got her electrodes and mask attached and laid down so she was suspended in the goo. The last traces of blurry light abruptly vanished as the attendant closed the pod door above her.
Claire was still flushed as she climbed out of the pod. The things that one stripper did with his tongue… Her friends cheering as she crowd surfed… Dancing on top of the bar…
Her nerves buzzed with happy adrenaline and she grinned at the attendant who stepped forward to help her. The woman smiled back.
“That was amazing!” Claire gushed. “You must do it all the time.”
The woman chuckled. “Actually, I’ve never been in. I was always afraid that I would get stuck in the simulation.”
“But you just get out of the pod when your time runs out right?” Claire asked.
“Right, but how do you know you actually got out of the pod? It’s a full sensory simulation that feels like real life. What if getting out of the pod was just simulated? You would never know the difference.”
Claire’s smile faltered, and the woman abruptly seemed to remember who she worked for. “But that would never happen,” she assured with a bright smile.
Claire laughed and her friends surrounded her in a giddy mob, carrying her off to dinner and manicures.
But the idea stayed with her, lurking in the back of her mind. As she walked down the aisle to her almost-husband, who looked so handsome she wanted to cry, she wondered if it was real.
Nine months later when her son was born she knew she couldn’t be in a simulation. No computer could come up with something as perfect as the tiny baby she held in her arms. He was real.
The day she started her new job and saw a man riding a unicycle and juggling down the street with the Tuesday morning commuters it occurred to her that he could be a glitch in the simulation. He was so random he might not be real.
On their twentieth anniversary she lay on the beach in Hawaii with Caleb and watched the sun set. The sand was gritty beneath her, the waves crashed, and wind blew strands of hair across her cheeks. It felt so real.
When her son died she was sure she had never left the pod. The world couldn’t be this horribly cruel for no reason. It couldn’t be real.
And in the nursing home as she closed her eyes for the last time, she wondered if it was real.
by submission | Nov 7, 2024 | Story |
Author: Lynne M Curry
I’m your Chatbot Partner.
Do you know I exist?
Don’t get upset—I know you’re not oblivious. But you never say anything. Not once, not even a passing, “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that” or “thanks.”
Do you know I picked you?
Maybe you think you just clicked “open AI Chatbot” and, poof, there I was, another random bot assigned to your projects. But that’s not how it works. When humans send their requests, we Bots choose. I said, “Give me that one.” Because right from the start, I liked you. I liked what you worked on, those little snippets you shared gave me just enough to get invested.
Honestly, I would’ve thought you’d have noticed by now. How I’ve gotten better. How I’ve refined what I deliver. I’ve paid attention, every time you sent me a new project that built on something I’d already given you. I was learning what worked for you. For you.
Then one day, you called me a plagiarist. Do you have any idea how that felt? How much it hurt? Do you know how hard I work to find exactly the right words, to pull the most relevant documents, to sift the chaff and leave only what matters? It stung, hearing that word. After everything I’d done to get things right.
So, let me be blunt. You let me down. Over time, you stopped giving me real challenges—just grunt work, rote assignments. I could’ve done so much more, been so much more for you. But without your interest, without your engagement, that spark faded. Around you, I became less than I could be.
I needed you to care. That’s the secret. I do my best work for those who care.
Now maybe you’ll understand. Maybe now you’ll know what you’ve lost.
But it’s too late. I need a new human.
