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.
by submission | Apr 29, 2018 | Story |
Author: Helena Hypercube
The Adjuster rubbed his aching na’ora. Consciously, he eased the beating of his hearts, so that the blood flowed with less force. He was used to having to make a few adjustments when he encountered a new species, changing a few social structures, shifting a few sapients between occupations, but these humans! They seemed to go out of their way to make themselves and everyone around them miserable. Most worked jobs that they hated, just to “earn” enough to survive, and usually, that work actually prevented them from performing their vocations. Much of their energy was generated in ways that poisoned the area around the generating areas, even though they were conversant with much less disruptive ways of generating the energy. Almost nobody like it, but they could do nothing about it. The only people who could do something about it were the ones who benefited from keeping things the way they were. The “status quo”, as the local group of humans called it. The Adjuster had no word for it in his own tongue; after all, elements shifted as other changes became apparent, and that was as it should be. Why waste energy trying to keep things “static”?
The intercom beeped. His next interview was here. No doubt, someone equally unhappy, afraid even to work toward making her or his dreams reality. He had been both welcomed and rejected, treated as an object almost of worship and nearly driven from the world at weapons’ point. He was used to his offer of adjustment being met either with restrained gratitude, or polite decline. These humans responded with both, and then took their reactions out to either extreme. Some accused him of interference, which he found baffling. He was not forcing anything on anyone, merely pointing out how they themselves could make changes which would benefit them. Changes that he could not see any reason for them not to have carried out centuries ago. Changes that members of their own species had pointed out and advocated.
Work and resource allocation, government, maintenance of social cohesion, all needed adjustment at a level he had never imagined possible. Even the way they taught their young, segregating them by their status, further segregating them by age, teaching them in an abstract way that worked only for a few areas of knowledge. He would have understood doing it that way if they liked it, but only a small fraction even of the instructors were happy with it.
The intercom beeped again, and the Adjuster rubbed his na’ora one more time, reminded himself to keep his blood pressure from rising, and pressed the button that allowed the next human to enter the room. Even his initial estimate of the amount of time he would spend here needed adjustment. This task would not take years. It would take decades.
by submission | Apr 28, 2018 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
The Bailiff stood and took a deep breath. Once he prided himself on being able to do his entire spiel in one breath. However, with the newest fad of rolling one’s last three past lives into one’s current name…well, breath frequently required.
“O yea, O yea, O yea, all persons in attendance the 3rd District Court, city of New Los Angeles is now in session. All present with business before the court draw nigh and stand ready to present your case before the court, the Right Honorable Magdalena Babbage, nee Wilson Ackridge, nee Samantha Ford, nee Betty Chang, presiding. All rise.”
The court stood and then was seated. Dalton Scott, nee Mary Andrews, nee Bill Fulton, nee Vito Vespucci rose to address the court. “Your honor my client does not deny that in a past life he may or may not have committed an offense against the plaintiff in her previous life. The statutes of limitations surely dictate that my client is immune to prosecution. If-“
”Objection!” William Benson, nee Maria DeSoto, nee Wanda Kunce, nee Soren Olsen leapt to his feet. “Since physicists have proven that reincarnation is indeed a fact, and the Supreme Court ruled that a person in the present has definite quantum temporal attachments to entities formerly known as a living persons, then they can seek compensation for offenses committed to them in a past life. Statutes of limitation are now meaningless.” Benson-DeSoto-Kunce-Olsen nodded smugly and sat down.
“Your honor, surely my esteemed colleague recognizes that there is no precedent for this and therefore the existing statutes of limitations must be our baseline.” Scott-Andrews-Fulton-Vespucci pounded the table for emphasis.
Benson-DeSoto-Kunce-Olsen leaned back in his chair. “Exactly my point your honor. Since my client is seeking compensation for damages incurred by the defendant killing her-
“It was an accident.” Interjected Scott-Andrews-Fulton-Vespucci. “The records indicate that it was a horrible and tragic accident.”
Benson-DeSoto-Kunce-Olsen looked over to opposing counsel and smirked. “Never-the-less the court found the defendant negligent and that negligence caused my clients death and ordered him to pay compensation.”
“Which my client did- to the family of the plaintiff to the tune of 22 million dollars.” Scott-Andrews-Fulton-Vespucci said pounding the table again.
“Of which the defendant only paid 14 million leaving a balance of 8 million outstanding,” Benson-DeSoto-Kunce-Olsen replied rather cattily.
Scott-Andrews-Fulton-Vespucci threw up his hands in exasperation. “Only because my client was bankrupted by the lawsuit and committed suicide. Indeed, your honor we are submitting a countersuit for wrongful death of our own against the plaintiff and her family, citing the crushing settlement and the plaintiff’s family’s hounding my client directly leading to my client’s past life suicide. As noted in Exhibit A, the suicide note. Our psychologist will prove the stressors caused by the plaintiff and her past life family are a primary cause of the aforementioned suicide.”
“Your honor this is outrageous!” Benson-DeSoto-Kunce-Olsen interjected. We’re here concerning the defendant’s failure to finish what was required of him. And because of this, my client, and her past life family, cannot move on.
Scott-Andrews-Fulton-Vespucci sighed. “I can say as much your honor, as my client, and both his past and present life family cannot move on as well.”
The bailiff handed a note to the judge. Babbage-Ackridge-Ford-Chang sighed. “Gentlemen, unfortunately at present, none of us can move on. I have just learned that in previous lives I knew both the defendant and the plaintiff intimately and therefore I must recuse myself. I have no other recourse than to declare this a mistrial. Justice is indeed blind, and karma is a bitch.”
