by submission | Apr 8, 2018 | Story |
Author: Richard Wren
Grampa Leg heaved his large, square frame from the floor and trundled across the family room to where the youngster sat. Deep in concerned thought, the child twiddled his long fingers, picking at the rubbery fingertips. Ma watched from the corner of the room while doing her chores. She had almost completed another head. Its blue-tinted eyes looked up, already curious and blinking.
“You okay, Boy?” Grampa sat next to the worried youngster, their bodies apparently identical.
“I guess so, Grampa. It just feels funny, yknow?”
Grampa knew. He had given birth many times. “It may feel strange the first time, Son, but its nature’s way. Afterward, you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.”
He draped his long, flexible arm around the first-timer. “Then I’ll have to stop calling you ‘Son’.”
It was true. Afterward, he would have a name – just like Grampa Leg or Aunt Carapace. Ma was different, of course. Ma was special. He looked across to her for reassurance.
She had just connected the new head and was now fastening on some casing plates, holding her creation firmly to stop it wriggling as bits were added. It was always good to watch Ma at work – homely and comforting.
The sudden feeling in his belly brought his thoughts back to immediate issues. “It’s started” he whispered.
Grampa Leg leaned closer to listen. There was a faint hum and sound of sprayed liquids from deep in the guts. “Yep, it’s started. It shouldn’t take long now, Boy.”
From all around the family room, the others waved or nodded their good wishes but no-one came closer. Ma had nearly finished her new youngster and looked around for any more components.
Grampa continued listening. Now the sounds were a series of clicks and whirrs. The rhythmic noises stopped. “I think you’re done. The next bit is going to feel a little strange, but don’t worry.”
As if the warning had been a trigger, there was a sensation that the youngster had never felt before. It was like the front of his abdomen was going to split in half. Then it did.
A section of his front carapace lifted and slid to the side, dripping sticky threads and revealing a deep cavity. Warmth and strange smells drifted out of the unexpected and obscene hole.
“Oh God, this is too weird!”
“Just keep calm.” Without a fuss, Grampa reached into the moist hollow and removed its contents. He held it, still glistening, for the boy to see.
“Congratulations Son. Or should I call you ‘Brains’?”
Taking the newly created memory unit from Grampa Leg, Brains used his other hand to close his newly discovered door. It still felt sensitive as it clicked back into place. “Thanks, Grampa. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Of course you could. Now go on – show it to Ma.”
Feeling happy and relaxed now, Brains accepted the congratulations of the family as he crossed the room to present his firstborn to Ma. She took it with her own personal nod of congratulations, her body also identical to his and to every other family member. Only her function was different.
Glowing, Brains watched as Ma started on a new head to hold his memory unit. Brains’ square body, manipulator arms, and short wheeled legs seemed to shine with happiness in the lights of the family room, as did a small plastic label on his back that evolution had not bothered to remove or change in a thousand years.
“Industrial 3D printer, Intelliprint Corporation 2035.”
by submission | Apr 7, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mina
Captain Agnes Parker rubbed the back of her sore neck and rolled her shoulders. If anyone had told her how many tedious tasks a captain had to deal with every week… Currently, she was examining the ship supply lists as certain items kept going astray. She lived for such events of interstellar importance. In desperation, she began to go through the latest delivery of com-keys. It was the third key she plugged in that grabbed her by the throat.
– “Hey, Aggie… It feels so odd to say something other than Captain and ma’am after this last year. I’m not complaining… I know I deserved the deep freeze you put me into… I want so much to apologise again, but you told me once that actions speak louder than words. So… I’ve added my medical data for the last year, which should tell you more than any words could… I checked the rosters and we both have the same four-day break coming up. I’ll wait every evening between 6 and 9 at our old table in the rec area. If you feel there is nothing left to say, I’ll accept it and start looking for a new posting on another fleet ship.”
******
Lieutenant Riordan Morris sipped his drink slowly. One more hour and hope would officially be lost. He felt so tired and on the verge of tears. Big, strapping blokes did not cry though, so he would have to swallow hard and move on. If nothing else, this year had brought a measure of self-knowledge and balance he had sorely lacked before.
A quiet voice interrupted his musings:
– “Is this seat taken?”
He looked up and did not even try to hide the myriad of emotions that crossed his face – relief, trepidation, hope and cautious delight.
– “No, I mean yes, it is now. Can I get you a drink?”
– “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
He waved at the server, ordered more of the same and they sat in painful silence until the drink arrived. She raised her eyebrows in surprise at her first sip.
– “Guava juice, Rio?”
– “What, you don’t think it will make hairs grow on my chest?”
Aggie laughed. Then she cut straight to the chase. Aggie had never been one for doing war dances around bushes.
– “I looked at the medical data you sent me. Your weekly blood tests show that you haven’t touched any alcohol for almost twelve months. That was… good to see. Also, your daily gym routine has reduced your BMI back to more than healthy levels. Um, I’m not sure I needed the ejaculation data showing no sexual activity, apart from five minutes in the shower every morning.”
– “I needed you to see that I could stay sober and be faithful.”
– “But we haven’t been in a relationship for over a year now. And I certainly didn’t remain celibate.”
Rio winced:
-“I didn’t expect you to. You didn’t have anything to prove.”
– “Neither did you.”
– “Yeah, I did. I knew when you wouldn’t accept my apology after how I behaved when you got your promotion that I had to prove to you I could stop the drinking and keep it in my pants.”
– “Why?”
– “Because you getting the promotion instead of me wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was you leaving me… And I knew I had to clean up my act for myself too before I pissed away what was left of my career after the official reprimand.”
There was a long pause and then Aggie reached out and touched his hand:
– “Ok. I guess I’m ready to talk now.”
by submission | Apr 6, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mark Joseph Kevlock
We came to their planet to study them. But we found their understanding of the universal mechanisms to be shockingly limited. We’ve managed to locate only one man, thus far, among billions, who possesses any true grasp of the situation. His name is Dexter Collig. The following enclosed report is a portion of his neuro-transmissions, gathered on a typical day:
“Stupid alarm clock always plays a lousy song. I swear that snooze button gyps me out of a whole minute every time I press it. The day’s against me. I can feel it already. House is too cold. That heat never comes on when I need it. Why don’t I throw this razor out, if it keeps cutting me? Jesus, what did I eat last night? Any food I like never agrees with me. The shower takes forever to warm up. Let’s see what the cabinet has inside for breakfast. Nothing, nothing, and nothing. Thanks a lot.”
You will note subject Dexter Collig’s continual insistence upon blaming every physical object he encounters, denoting a wisdom regarding reality construction, that other members of his species appear to lack. The report continues:
“This engine never starts on the first try. If anything worked around here, I wouldn’t always be late. Freeway’s crowded with cars, like it’s out to get me. Here comes that ugly stretch of highway that makes me depressed every morning. Why does the sun have to come up right there between those mountain peaks, right at this particular moment, and shine right into my eyes? Damn sun. Damn weather has been lousy all week.”
The rest of our report demonstrates an unwavering consistency in Dexter Collig’s expressed attitudes. We would suggest that this subject be picked up immediately so that we might more quickly understand the source of his wisdom. Please advise. Senior Researcher, Jezz Trumble.
Reply from: Ministry of Galactic Relations.
Subject: Earthling Dexter Collig.
Permission to interview: Granted.
We abducted D. Collig from his shower stall at 7:32 a.m., Earthtime, by use of the phanto-ray. A transcript of our interview with him is here provided:
“Mr. Collig, do you know where you are?”
D. Collig: “What the hell happened? Where are my pants!”
Fast-forwarding to relevant portion…
“How is it, Dexter Collig, that you come by this extraordinary wisdom, daily expressed?”
“Huh?”
“You understand the nature of reality far better than any of your fellows.”
“It must have been those six slices of pizza I had last night, giving me this nightmare….”
“Not at all, D. Collig. Although your ability to pinpoint each source of stress hampering your existence fascinates us no end.”
“Yeah. I throw a lot of blame around. So what?”
“You accuse physical objects of working against you.”
“Because they are!”
“We know.”
D. Collig here expresses great surprise.
“You mean, I’m right? The world is out to get me?”
“Of course it is, Dexter Collig. Because you made the world. And that is the world you made.”
“Huh?”
“Reality is built upon one’s expectations. It complies with belief, deep down in its sub-physical layers, where your thoughtrons interact with elementary components to create matter.”
D. Collig: “I’m like a god, then….”
“Yes, Mr. Collig. If a red light turns against you, it is because you believed it would. And so, naturally, that red light is to blame.”
D. Collig, pleased with himself: “I’ve been right all along!”
“You lend us hope, D. Collig, for the rest of your species.”
Subject was returned to shower stall at 7:39 a.m., Earthtime. Slipped and hit his head against glass door.
Blamed soap.
by submission | Apr 5, 2018 | Story |
Author: Josie Gowler
Since I woke up in the base hospital, there’s been a steady stream of people coming and going and being nice to me in between. The burns on my hands are being dealt with: they don’t hurt at all now. The skin just feels tight under the bandages.
When I landed last week I elbowed open the cockpit, tumbled out of the pilot’s seat and slid down the side of the ship: it was really hard to descend when I couldn’t use my hands. It did, however, look planned and a little bit elegant; I then wrecked the essential dignity of the occasion by vomiting on the deck.
I didn’t think the assembled crap-hats had expected that. The cheers rang around the bay regardless, with lots of “Well done”s and “Good show”s (what was this, the nineteenth century?)
“This’ll shorten the war,” I heard a medic saying, out of breath from rushing over to me.
Too right it will, I thought, as my cheek hit the cold floor and I passed out.
And now I’m here, and the news outlets – skipping the footage of my actual landing – think I’m some sort of hero. I thought that Jayce would have something sensible to say, but she rushes in then pauses to catch her breath. “They’ve surrendered!” she gasps. “The big green bastards have actually surrendered!” She kisses me. “You did it!”
“Well, not really,” I reply between snogs. “It was the T-cell boffins that did the hard work. Folks like you.” That’s how I met her: the one thing I can be grateful for.
She kisses me again. “Only you could have got their DNA in the first place. Only you could have piloted the ship back to drop the payload off. Only you could have made it back through all that railgun fire.”
I’m about to say something when we both spot General Stanley marching along the corridor. “Great,” I mutter.
Jayce kisses me on the forehead and whispers in my ear, “Cheer up. Maybe as our next feat we boffins can gene edit him into not being an arsehole. Or into a domesticated non-aggressive arsehole, if nothing else.” She giggles and flees.
The General launches into a boring pre-prepared speech even though I’m the only one in the room.
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster,” I quote when he pauses for breath.
“Nietzsche? Oh, come now. If you’d really had concerns you wouldn’t have volunteered. And later on, when you’re better and you think about what you’ve done, you’ll be proud of yourself.” He resists the urge to shake my hand and pats me on the shoulder instead.
I smile as the door swings shut behind him, because that’s what’s expected of me. I don’t sigh. I don’t scream. I do roll the syllables of the word genocide around in my head.
And I never thought the word hero could taste so bitter.
by submission | Apr 4, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Tomi Mura, a specialist in inter-planetary law, sat aboard a six-person capsule en route to Planet Arazan. The magnetic-field modulator of the small hyperbolically propulsed vessel gave her the sensation of gliding gently through the depths of an immense sea.
She had departed from the Old Planet, the common name in the interstellar territories for that ancient remote body otherwise known in the archaic languages of her world as terra, eretz, dee cheeo, and ardh. She turned her head to the window at her right and beheld glowing nebulas of star clouds and nuclear luminescences on the dark horizon.
Human expansion into deep space had, in the course of two millennia, produced myriads of societies. And where the quadrillions of humanity had dispersed, they set in motion on their newly claimed worlds natural, competing variations of attitudes, behaviors, interests, and values, which rapidly grew into distinctive cultures with their own dominant characteristics, principles, and laws.
So, too, had it been on Planet Arazan, whose idiosyncrasy was its militant status as a self-declared non-treaty independent planet and the only planet on which the Radical Machine Rightsists (RMR) had established the Anthrobotic Republic, based on the full existential equality of human beings and machine beings.
Tomi Mura reviewed her virtual data notes about the case for which the Ministry of Planets had dispatched her: Jizu Mori, a curiosity seeker on a tour visit from the Old Planet, had committed a capital offense on Planet Arazan—violation upon a machine, resulting in its deactivation. By the absolute categorical law of the RMR, he had no option for on-planet or inter-planet legal defense, and he would be tried and executed on terms reciprocal to his crime—violation by a machine, resulting in his death. The law did, however, for diplomatic reasons, permit a nonparticipant observer from the homeworld of the accused to be present as a witness to the execution.
The capsule navigated through a proton storm, passed the solar flares of two white binary stars, and coursed toward a scintillating red-giant star in whose habitable zone orbited a nubilous green sphere, the Planet Arazan. The capsule autonomously triangulated its landing coordinates, entered the artificially oxygenated atmosphere, and made its way to the silicate rock surface below.
Tomi Mura was the only one authorized to deboard. The capsule door connected her to a disembarkation tube that led to a magnetic levitation shuttle. She wondered where the reception committee was, and she sat in an empty passenger car, which traveled noiselessly for ten minutes above the craggy, faded green, treeless landscape. An isolated crystalline edifice below came to her view. The shuttle stopped at an empty station. She made her way down an escalator and, outside, walked up a wide path to the structure.
She entered the edifice, and within its walls was a vast room where, to her surprise, she saw Jizu Mori, short, square-headed, denuded. He was neurally immobilized and positioned before a projected holographic recording showing him in an accommodation room, luring, attacking, and ravaging an android minder designed in the soft form of a girl who appeared no more than fourteen. Her name was Nazeera-3.
A conveyor strip suddenly carried him into an observation chamber. Two sliding metal-alloy doors sealed shut. The neural immobilizer switched off. He trembled in a fit of paroxysms. Sweat rushed down his face. He heard a noise, turned around, and saw advancing an ambulant machine that resembled the primitive corkscrew—and it pounced on him.
Tomi Mura was speechless before the punitive scene, and when all that was left was a mince of the man, she fainted.
A while later, she awoke to find herself on board the six-person capsule, deep in space, on its way home. She was feverish and haunted, staring at the silent sitting crew members, and she wondered if the Old Planet androids who accompanied her on the journey would have agreed with existential law had they witnessed the incident on Arazan.
