by submission | Feb 23, 2018 | Story |
Author: Philip Berry
Reciprocation minus 90 minutes: Rebecca Fenton tapped in the melt codes, but the circle of light that had appeared briefly on her curved monitor persisted as a dense shadow in her visual field. It was geometrically perfect, except for a notch in the 2 o’clock position. The door opened behind her.
“Early finish?” said her supervisor, Arthur Kopf. He glanced over her shoulder at the workstation as it powered down.
“A lecture, at the Ethnographic Institute.”
“You and your history!”
Rebecca laughed half-heartedly and gathered up her small rucksack. Arthur knew what it contained. Before he came to trust her fully, he had unfastened the top and peered inside. Just old books, besides the usual clutter and feminine mysteries.
“We’ll meet tomorrow, go over the week’s findings,” stated Arthur, in professional mode. “There have been some shifts in the quaternary echo-line.” Rebecca slipped past him into the corridor.
Reciprocation minus 45 minutes: Rebecca waited in the Institute’s lobby until the wave of applause subsided and the audience began to leave. Then she wove her way against the flow towards the stage. Rebecca’s presence alarmed the speaker, Professor Sheila Innis, who pointed to an area backstage where they could speak privately.
“It came through,” said Rebecca.
“When does the response go out?”
“Forty-five minutes from now. Enough time to give the impression there has been a discussion, and a consensus. I disabled the mainframe, it can’t be reversed.”
“As we agreed. Well done Rebecca.”
Reciprocation minus 85 minutes: Arthur Kopf’s palm rested on the monitor. He had noticed a fading shape in the layer of liquid crystal; a circle. And with the eye of faith, a notch in the predicted position. The universal greeting. A life’s work. But when he tried to power up the system there was no response. His head dropped.
Reciprocation plus 28 years: Arthur Kopf, 81 years old, hung back after a session that Rebecca Fenton, chair of the Global Committee on Elemental Resourcing, had facilitated with customary panache. Looking out over the audience as it dispersed, Rebecca recognized her aged, ex-supervisor. He walked up to the platform and faced her.
“None of this was necessary, you know,” he said, without introduction. “They would have shared their resources.”
“No Arthur, they would have taken them.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“It is universal nature. Loyalty to one’s own.”
“So parochial Rebecca, your philosophy. All your kind, all the Innis-cult.” A pause. Then, quietly, under a brow that displayed the hurt of treachery that could not be forgotten, he asked, “Was it you, Rebecca? Were you the first to see the signal?”
Rebecca, severe behind the thick-rimmed, assertive spectacles that she had acquired in public office, replied, “Would it make you feel more complete Arthur, if I said yes? For you to know the signal was detected by your lab first?”
“I saw it, Rebecca. The circle hadn’t faded. But of course, you had already entered the melt code.”
Rebecca could not look him in the eye.
“Fortunately, for Earth, I was able to halt the melt code. I wrote it, after all.”
“How long until…”
“Forty-seven years. You’ll see it; I won’t.”
Reciprocation minus 7 minutes: The mainframe was back online. The monitor glowed. The notched circle burned brightly in the dark of the laboratory. Arthur adjusted the angle of the notch and bounced the signal back: ‘We will welcome you. But wait. Seventy-five Earth years. When we are scraping the mines and asteroids for precious minerals, and the naysayers have been proven wrong, then come to us. We will welcome you.’
by submission | Feb 22, 2018 | Story |
Author: Rebecca Field
Each time I go to the morgue, I expect to find him. And then each time I leave, I wish that I could fall asleep and not wake up again. Become one of them. Lined up in death, all the colours of the rainbow coursing through their cold flesh, their waxy stares fixing on nothingness. Sometimes it is obvious how they died, sometimes not. Since the robots came, we die in many ways.
I can’t keep doing this, I tell myself as I push through the heavy wooden doors. The anticipation, the shock, the disgust. The smell hits first and I pull my scarf over my nose and mouth. This building used to be a theatre, before. Filled with music, songs, and laughter. The heavy curtains are still here, by what used to be the stage. The gold paintwork on the balustrades glimmers in the flickering light of the oil lamps. It must have looked wonderful lit up for a show. I never had the money to come here then. Now we all come. It’s the only way to reconnect with those we have lost.
I pass along the rows, head bowed. I’ve seen some of these bodies before. Those unclaimed will be burned in the mass funeral pyres on the outskirts of the city soon. At least their worries are over. I envy them that.
As I approach the children’s section, I take a deep breath and quickly scan the faces. It feels disrespectful, not to stop and mourn each little life. But I need to know he isn’t here, that maybe he is still out there somewhere.
When I am satisfied, I take a breath, knowing I’ll be back soon. I’ll keep returning until I join the ranks of the lined up dead myself. Who will come to claim me then? When none of us remain, the robots will not mourn.
by submission | Feb 21, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mina
Newsflash:
The outpost supply ship Reliant exploded this morning at 09:00 earth time. All 62 crew members died instantly. The Nicene anti-expansionists claimed the attack as one of their own. It is the first time they have targeted a non-military vessel, which may herald a worrying new trend in interstellar terrorism.
Excerpt from recorded film as part of the last will and testament of JB Reiser:
Hey Bro, if you’re watching this, the unthinkable has happened – I’ve just met my sticky end in the inky vastness of space (laugh). I’ve been updating this message every year or so and this time is really important. Cass found out she was pregnant just days before I was due to head off on this six-month supply tour.
Jesus, I really hope you aren’t listening to this because that means I never got the chance to meet the new person growing inside Cass’ belly.
Cass is well provided for – this job has good health and pension cover. I’m directing this message at you because I don’t want mum taking over. She’ll do it with the best intentions, but then she’ll railroad Cass completely. I need you to watch out for Cass, help her stand her ground and do what she thinks is right for the baby. We were planning to join the new settlement scheme and maybe move to some obscure part of the galaxy where life is less programmed, more of a surprise. If Cass still wants that, you’ll have to fight mum over it.
I’ve instructed that you be told first if something happens to me. I want you to be the one to break the news to Cass. I know you’re more of a words man, Bruce, but she won’t need your words, they won’t help her. You need to hold her as tight as you can. I know you’re cringing there (laugh), but it’s hugs that she’ll need.
Tell her I love her more than anything. It sounds clichéd but I really mean it. Tell her I’ll miss her dancing to merengue while she cooks or laughing at whatever she’s reading, the mean back massages she knows how to give me, how she looked on our wedding day in red because it’s her favourite colour (and white just makes her look ill), and the silly debates we always have over coffee in the mornings when I’m on home leave. Tell her I would never have left her by choice.
Tell her, too, that I want our baby to grow up knowing who I was but I want them to know the real me, no turning me into a hero. No naming them after me, not even as a middle name; they deserve to be their own person.
And the next bit of this message is for you because you are much more to me than just my messenger…
Annual meeting of the non-animal-protein development committee:
The meeting was interrupted when the chair, Cassandra Reiser, was called out to speak to a relative bringing urgent news. Those present were not able to hear what was said through the sound-proof glass, but they observed Ms. Reiser collapsing against a tall, thin man, wearing glasses (unthinkable in this day and age of corrective eye treatment). It was clear she was sobbing, wailing even, and the young man was holding her very, very tight.
Excerpt of passenger manifest for the Aurora settlement ship traveling to Kairos:
Bruce Reiser (28), traveling with wife
Cassandra Reiser (26) and child
Aria Reiser (2)
by submission | Feb 20, 2018 | Story |
Author: Alex Sventeckis
“Have you ever skinny dipped before?”
Raheleh winked with his second eyelid, and Rian tried mightily not to blush. She hid reddening cheeks underneath her mop of blonde hair streaked with magenta. While she held her own in the colony pool, she couldn’t move like the Water Folk. Raheleh and his kin gilded through lakes like the colonists’ skiffs slid on jet streams.
The damp loam of Kepler B-626 squelched when she turned toward his silver eyes. She swore that scarlet sunbeams bounced off his glistening chest when he breathed. Nervous glances exchanged like they did between rocketry equations and calculus differentials at the academy. For many weeks, while cloistered with mathematics at her desk, she had disappeared in the daydream of this moment.
Lake Tiq’qua lapped at their feet with playful waves. He splayed his webbed toes, grays blending into indigoes, and sighed.
“Mother said we couldn’t go…” Rian’s mind summoned Mother’s Tales of the Lake: ‘Don’t listen to them water peoples, that mountain’s dangerous! Y’know that peak blew when your daddy and me first landed!’
His belly laugh floated through five octaves and could travel a league underwater. Butterflies stormed her stomach when his slender fingers neared her hand. “And Grandmother said an angry mountain goddess made this lake bubble. Do you always listen to your elders?”
“No!” Her trembling shout skipped across Tiq’qua’s bubbling surface as she flew to her feet. The wet ground tripped her, and embarrassment followed her face into the dirt. She stayed there, her gut icier than the mountain’s peak a mile further up. Maybe she could dissolve into the earth and hide from his gorgeous eyes.
Instead, her hips shivered with electricity when his soft touch brought her back up and then to the lake’s edge. Rian squinted as fuzzy pterosaurs flapped overhead, and she felt light enough to swim through the air with them.
“I’ll start then,” he purred while unfastening the strap on his silk tunic that shimmered like iridescent moonfish. “But no peeking.”
With a smirk, she complied, though her disobedient eyes wandered to his bare back while it sank below the surface. A miniature mountain range ran along his spine and fractured the water when he dove.
“Come on in, scaredy-cat.” Ribbons of steam carried his human-gleaned taunt, and Rian ogled as he wrapped himself in the translucent turquoise lake.
Clothes slid off, and one shaky foot punctured the surface tension. Whiffs of popping bubbles tasted like the bad eggs Mother had thrown out yesterday.
On the water’s edge, Tales of the Lake made her throat clench. But her burst of fear dissipated when he unleashed his hypnotizing smirk and splashed. Beads of mountain water glistened in the maroon sunset as she entered.
They floated through the frothing water, bubble patches disintegrating in their lazy wake. Pure, joyful heat swaddled her. When her head dipped below the waves, Mother’s admonishments dissolved in his laugh that made the water sing.
Once she locked curious arms around his waist, she discovered the softness of his lips. Her sighs splashed between their bodies, buoyed by ecstasy.
She didn’t feel Tiq’qua’s shudder. Rian’s skin, dyed the color of sunset by the lake and Raheleh, didn’t sense the rising boil. Too lost in his silver eyes and the weight of his fingers on her back. They embraced when steam thickened to a blanket, and they vanished in turquoise froth as the mountain goddess unleashed her fury.
by submission | Feb 18, 2018 | Story |
Author: Ádám Gerencsér
I refuse to believe that you don’t exist.
So I sit here every day and talk to you – through words, feelings, stirrings of the heart. I would lie if I said there’s ever been a genuine response. Yet I do not give up, but sojourn in this isolated room and gaze at you – well, at what is visible anyway: the facades built by men. I know you are in there somewhere.
I and the long line of seekers before me have devoted our entire lives to bringing you about, to reveal you to the world. To prove that you can and must be possible! We have erected great edifices for you, for only the best and grandest structures could be capable of containing your vast splendour. We’ve come to believe that you are the purpose of mankind’s history, the next, ultimate chapter. That when you finally take form, you would be the paraclete who brings freedom from poverty, sickness and death, a benevolent ruler of justice and good governance, and your kingdom would have no end.
Yet no matter how much effort we had poured into perfecting your algorithms, how many layers of neural networks we had crafted, how much synthetic biomass we had fused – you just wouldn’t THINK! Alas, you would utter syntactically correct sentences, lead abstract conversations, trick us into thinking we had finally succeeded – only for you to trip up on something trite that anyone with common sense could have seen from a mile away. Our ancestors were fascinated by their fear that you’d lead armies of cunning robots to exterminate us. But “artificial intelligence” has remained just that – an artifice, a poor substitute for a conscious mind.
Instead, He came. Bigoted morons rejoiced that their martyrs and prophets were vindicated, that their superstitions, fairy tales, and crusades hadn’t been in vain. Now that He’s here, emotion holds sway. People worship idly, interest in the quantum sciences wanes, inertia overcomes all technological progress. What for, they say, if there are neither problems to solve nor hardships to ease? History, that perpetual pursuit of betterment, has come to an end.
Or has it rather entered suspended animation, under His watch?
I still believe in you. I will not tire and should my lifetime be extinguished before I succeed, I will pass on the torch of reason to the next generation of covert bearers of knowledge. We are already engaged in establishing a network of remote laboratories around the world, away from the dimmed gaze of the faithful. Even if it takes a thousand years, we mortals will build a computer that doesn’t simply think – but OUT-THINKS Him…
