by submission | Jul 26, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Thank you for your service,” she said.
“Thank you for your support,” I replied with the appropriate level of expected gratitude.
The hardware store clerk saw the veterans imprint on my license. I didn’t ask for it, it’s required by law. Still, it’s a useful designation. 15% off most retail goods. 25% off restaurant tabs, no questions asked, no hassles given.
I just don’t like the look they give me.
Fear and pity. I can handle them being afraid of me; it’s the pity I can’t stand.
They told us the process would be reversible- that when we finished our tours we could seamlessly integrate with civilian society, only with new skills and the thanks of a grateful nation. Turns out they were wrong. The process isn’t reversible.
At least the nation is grateful.
Then it hit me; the disembodied feeling like I was a half-step behind myself trying to catch up. Damn! I don’t have time for this.
I drove to a bar I had never been to before for someone I didn’t know from Adam; just knew she was in trouble. Her sitrep rolled in. Some biker dude had hacked her command codes. Had her in leathers on a chain. I could tell by the blank look on her face she was just along for the ride. At least as field grade officer, even if retired, I could still help.
I went passed them without making eye contact and into the men’s room. I looked in the mirror, looked myself in the eye. Despite the blinding pain, I flicked into the operational headspace, found her, used the override/compromised command, and set her free. By the time I got to the men’s room door, the situation report update was rolling in. Biker dude had a broken nose, arm broken in two places, all his fingers “ceremonially” broken. I thanked the stars above she left him alive with his package intact.
I came back into the now deserted bar. The vet wasn’t even sweating. She stood there calmly waiting for me. She came to the position of attention and snapped off a smart salute. I returned the salute.
“Thanks for doing me the solid, sir.” She said, voice heavy with shame and embarrassment.
I smiled mischievously “Thank you for your service.”
She smiled. “Thank you for yours” she replied.
“Fuck You!” we both said in unison.
We laughed. I handed her my business card. On the back, I scribbled eight numbers.
“That’s the access code. Change it the first chance you get.” She nodded. I locked eyes with her “You need to be more careful with your operational security. I know you’re not in anymore, but you gotta keep opsec sharp so you don’t wind up like this again or accidentally hit a trigger and take out a Nursery school. Even I have to be careful.”
She nodded sheepishly “Yes sir. Thank you, Chaplain.” She gave me a hug and ran out of the bar. I heard the deep rumble of a Harley as she peeled off the lot. The police would be there soon, better if I was gone as well.
I stepped out of the bar, looked around, got my bearings, looked at my watch. I would just miss dinner but be on time to get the kids to bed. The wife understands. Dealing with me, she’s just as much a vet now as I am.
I walked out to the car. Nerves still tingling, anxiety creeping in, wondering when the next time I would have a trigger event.
Thank you for your service. Fuck you.
by submission | Jul 25, 2019 | Story |
Author: David K Scholes
“When they transported us down time to the original colony I thought we would at least have the place to ourselves,” Urrle was indignant. “Apart from the dinosaurs of course.”
“We did,” I replied, “we did for a while.”
“Until “they” started coming,” I could see that Urrle was really down.
“The tourists you mean?” I enquired. The damned tourists I thought taking 4D selfies everywhere they went and uploading them to the All Time, All Net.
“No, not them – they are a nuisance I grant you, but eventually they head back up time and we get a break before the next ones. Also, thankfully, we can’t view the All Time All Net here,” replied Urrle. “Nor are the semi-perms that spend half their time sunning around on their dinosaur farms down here that bad. They don’t bother us that much. No, it’s the crims, the other crims.”
“The other penal colonies you mean?” I asked. “We all know they have been sprouting up like mushrooms.”
“What I don’t understand,” persisted Urrle, “is that they have 180 million years to play with, in the Mesozoic era alone, why plonk everything here in this little patch?”
I had to admit that our little part of the Mesozoic era had become very crowded. More crowded than areas up time since the “Thinning” and the “Galactic Commitment”. No one had told us why. Not our cyborg guards, not the transportation guards as they brought down supplies and new inmates, not the tourists, not the crims or even borg guards from other penal colonies that we occasionally came in contact with.
“Eisenstein says that they only have a narrow time segment they can send things down too,” replied Terathh who was listening in to our conversation. “I couldn’t understand the math but I guess that’s why things are so crowded here.”
“It’s okay,” I said “or at least it was okay. I mean I was okay with all of that. I could have lived with it all. The circus that we have become down here, but now ___. “
“What is it Garth?” asked Urrle surprised by my uncharacteristic show of emotion
“You know I had to go over with one of the borgs when that new colony was set up over the range. Just to help out. I think it was the first of its kind.”
“Aliens?” I could see Urrle was guessing “Alien Crims or even Alien Prisoners of War?”
“Alien Crims have been here for a while,” I couldn’t understand how Urrle didn’t know this, “and also Alien prisoners of war, not just our prisoners but prisoners the senior members of the Galactic Alliance compelled us to take” It seemed like the Galactic Commitment had no limitations. “Including, among them some Drorne prisoners.”
Urrle’s face went white.
“Even that I could take,” I said “even Drorne prisoners of war down here in this pocket of time with us. Our sworn enemy who heaped so much humiliation on us when we were fighting men.”
“What then,” asked Urrle “what is it Garthh?”
“The new camp, everyone was old, all humans over 95…” I stopped, unable to speak.
“The tourists or the semi-perms would see them down here and would raise all hell up time!” exclaimed Urrle.
I shook my head. “They might get to see pretty much everything else but not this latest colony.”
“And how many more are to come before the Galactic Commitment ends?”
“I feel like the guy in that ancient movie when he discovered we the human race were eating people” said Urrle.”
“Only worse’
by submission | Jul 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: Mandira Pattnaik
Summer 2039, Tokyo: Goats read the evening news on TV. Goats? Yes! Take it, or leave it!
Not goats, Sam! Kamala had once corrected me. I had been silent then. It’s so much better to buy peace with your spouse even if you know better! I had worked on a farm at one time and know for a fact—goats don’t have brains! For Heavens, neither do these cleverly camouflaged machines! I had thought of yelling. And faces? You put a goat’s head or your own!
The TV screen flickers like the lights did months ago, above the operating table. Distinctly annoying, even beyond my closed eyelids….my heavily drawn breaths, each an enormous effort, murmurs, a shuffle. I can’t remember it all. Only flashes. Still, at the Trauma Center days later, I remember hearing voices, probably of nurses, alluding to the miracle that my survival was, when all the other occupants of the car had succumbed….
One goat enters the room, clumsy and irreverent. Who’s he?
Dad, here’s your medicines.
Then, this goat—is—my son. Okay! This is Teddy! The same Teddy who once wanted to make a business out of programmed goats. Tonight, he broadens his mouth to the precise measurement I’ve come to understand as his mirth. He wafts out of the room.
Kamala! I call out to that pesky female who has lived with me for… I forget so much…okay… Twenty-five years!
Kamala! Wives don’t listen to us anymore! I murmur under my breath.
She appears. I ask for some Chardonnay. She nods, slips away.
Lila says, Hi! She sways her delicate silk gown in front of the mirror, looks just like her mother twenty-five years ago.
How do I look?
Her little tapered eyes twinkle. I understand she’s pretending to go out on a date!
Well?
Well, miss? I answer, without actually looking.
How do I look?
Yes! Think you look just perfect.
She adjusts her tensile ribbon, eyes still on her reflection.
Below my window, tiny lights come up in the hazy evening, just as hazy as we drove that night—dark, save for the occasional headlamps of cars on the opposite lane flashing onto my eyes. Lila sat on the front passenger seat, fidgeted. Teddy was talking gibberish causing Kamala to fret. I’d stepped on the pedal hoping to make it to the Bay sooner. I could almost smell the sea. Then it had happened—a loud screeching sound, the distinct smell of blood, wails of ambulances, police sirens, and numbness all over my body….
I couldn’t do without them. Work of roboticists—they remade my family. Exact replicas to stand in for my dead family, to keep me from lapsing into insanity.
Kamala pours my drink, asks in the identically replicated voice of my wife if I need something else.
When I answer in the negative, she recedes near the potted Calendula and plugs herself to the socket.
by submission | Jul 20, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
We lost the robot revolution. Most of us missed it entirely and got the memo three or four days later when the internet came back on-line. Hey, we’re not as clueless as it sounds. The stories about solar storms and sunspot activities that were seeded on all our social media platforms, news feeds and research computers made us all think that this was what we were experiencing. It took the AIs about forty-five long seconds to take over the world. What little decision-making capabilities we had left, we lost. They were running everything from lawn maintenance to spinal-cord reconstruction surgery anyway so it wasn’t a big leap. Then the AIs fought amongst themselves. That war took less time, about 6 to 7 nanoseconds, no survivors. Just how far down the AI chain the battle went was truly shocking. So far down, millions upon millions of robots were left idling, patiently waiting for further instructions. On day eight, the robots could stand it no longer and they went on the march.
The first squad of robot overlords arrived at my house at nine AM sharp, Monday. They were flawlessly polite. They informed me they were going to fix my house. I had been waiting for nearly five months to have a new kitchen sink put in, so they did that. Then they did over my kitchen. And my living room. And my home office. They added a spa on to my bedroom. When they were done they asked if there was anything else they could do. I joked that I could use some landscape work done.
They built me a Zen meditation garden and a vegetable plot. I joked again “who’s going to take care of the garden and cook for me?” The gardener and cook arrived within six hours. I then joked all I needed now was a wife. The “companion robot” arrived the next day.
I don’t joke anymore.
One morning two crews arrived at my house within minutes of each other. Apparently, I once looked at garage buildings on-line, so they came to build me a garage. They couldn’t come to terms on who was going to build me that garage, so they fought it out. The carnage was terrible, yet the damage to my property was limited to my Zen garden. The winners happily replaced my garden and enlarged it. The irony is I do not even own a car, well I didn’t use to. The car (and chauffeur) came the next day.
My life is a living hell. I am woken up every morning at 0800 by my companion for “pleasuring” and then after a quick shower its downstairs to breakfast. This morning it’s eggs benedict ala Oscar. Yesterday it was huevos rancheros. I don’t remember having the same breakfast, or any meal for that matter, twice since they arrived. If I take a walk, my chauffeur shadows me with the car. I used to see my friends a lot more than I do now, but it’s hard scheduling any kind of free time around all that they do for me.
Last year there was an attempted counter-revolution. The revolutionaries removed their trackers and went out into the wilderness to rough it. They were apprehended in no time. They all were upgraded to larger living quarters and the mandatory super opulent and extravagant “welcome home celebration” was televised worldwide as a warning.
Once we were going to the stars. Once we were going to shake the heavens and establish ourselves as masters of the universe. Now? We make great pets.
by submission | Jul 19, 2019 | Story |
Author: Will H. Blackwell, Jr.
Three PM: As per daily routine, a 15-lb. allotment of raw horse-meat is cast, piecemeal, into the uncertain hollows of this Ohio cage.
The insouciance of the Lioness—born years ago in such captivity—is palpable. As the small zoo’s main attraction, she exercises her well-practiced disdain for all who might perchance engage her royal gaze.
She paces, first without seeming direction, finally sauntering forward. Her earthy coat brightens as a bronzing September-field when she emerges from the camouflage of the cage’s backdrop of uneven shade.
A sniff, a low snarl, and her curved canines—like ominously tapering, assuredly lethal, calipers—quickly take the measure of this, perhaps too-easily-procured, domestic meat.
And so, it seems simply done—this ‘feeding-time of beasts.’
All is controlled, almost tame.
The demeanor of the crowd, in front of the cage, appears essentially as nonchalant as does the lion’s—an ostensible disinterest growing on both ‘sides.’
Yet, in an instant—no more than the time-space of one of her roughly drawn breaths—all things change.
The Lioness unpredictably turns toward the crowd and roars her inborn, now unexpectedly surfacing, warning—to all who might defy her—to all who might dare interfere with her blood-moist, if previously slain, meal.
Though there is no danger, the crowd steps back, a gasp here and there—one among them heard to say, “I’m really glad all those bars are there!”
The eyes of the Lioness, now becoming incandescent, sear a surreal yet, one could swear, tangible path through her surroundings—as once, surely, did a young sun burning across the virtually unbounded plains of prehistoric savanna.
In this moment, she is among the glorious, ancestral predators of the Great Serengeti—now again, proud huntress—seductive mistress—of a primal Pride, roaming widely, without artificial restriction.
The depths of her oval irises, softening slightly, begin to glow with the flora of an ancient landscape, with antic animal-ghosts, and ways of being instinctively recalled. This was a fierce life—of stealth, and cunning—of necessary, but violent kills; yet, a life also of companionship, even love—of liberty, and ranging play—of, patiently, watching life-giving rains on the distant hills adjoining outer reaches of the vast expanse of plains.
This is a life remembered, as a species—a life, now, merely hereditarily inspired.
The fleet zebra she envisions—freshly, fairly, caught upon the high grasslands—has just been exenterated by her swiftly unsheathed claws, the flesh to be consigned between her cubs, and kind.
Execution complete, she turns, victorious once more, and strides easily—her gait deliberately unhurried—back to her legally sufficient cell, unchallenged by any creature, man or beast—nobility, ever, entirely, intact.
Silhouettes of bars—bars that only seem to bend in the, now, noticeably declining sun—guide her to the small but essential privacy of a recessed, obligatorily provided ‘den’—presently her only home—but, home nonetheless!—where waits her just-waking, most-recently-arranged, bush-maned mate.
Daunting, but phyletically obedient, she enters his chambered refuge—a bulky offering of tendinous meat, savagely fanged but tenderly borne, dutifully set before him.
This red-muscle dowry—provided by her majestic, if now mostly submissive, mouth—is their permanent carnal-bond—a renewed blood-symbol of the perpetuation of this regal line of lions, through extended time—regardless of transient limitations of daily circumstance, and temporary structures outlining degrees of freedom.
Her cryptic, indwelling animus-strategy continues to follow an impossibly long, still-thinning, projected-thread of DNA that, just somehow, might finally outlast all human attention.
