by submission | May 4, 2019 | Story |
Author: Luke Saldanha
I feel a rattling and distant heat; the final storm is brewing. Yet I lie here in the grass, full of optimism.
***
Enthralled, I gazed at the sky. Auntie taught me the constellations and planets as a child; I loved to stargaze and had done so countless times. But it felt better to behold the heavens now more than ever before in my 8,395 days in the World. The term ‘world’ is deemed relative, and ‘Earth’ described the actual planet, but I referred to the ‘World’ when talking about the ‘Earth’ because I was always in my own world anyhow.
Auntie was a schoolteacher and hobbyist astronomer; she took me under her wing. My parents were dead and my ‘confidence issue’ prevented me from making friends; the friendship with my Aunt was a significant one. My only one.
She found it refreshing, the interest I took. Her kids, extroverts with hectic social lives, didn’t care about the stars. That drove her to teach me more. But then Auntie was gone. I was alone. Before the flare, I’d been isolated six years, with nothing to live for but the buds of light above. I wanted more. I wanted people.
***
I am pinned back against the grass. The sky reddens with the first visuals of the eruption.
***
One evening, I arrived home from school, tears streaming. “What’s the matter, Max?” Auntie probed. “The kids are laughing again. What’s wrong with me?” She said nothing, walked out and began setting up the telescope on the dark lawn. Her heart was good, but what I really needed, she could not give me.
***
I will skip into the flames, and frolic in the embargo. Stick your gaseous tongue out, slurp on the vitals that lie on the warpath.
***
I was always a loner by force, by fate. Once the children discovered my face turned blue when embarrassed, they were keen for my constant humiliation. This led to hatred of them and I isolated myself.
As an adult, I existed on society’s outskirts, unable to be anything; over these years, my anxiety worsened. I was at the full mercy of my genetic affliction.
***
Streaks of green, purple and brown stain the heavens. The heat is rapidly intensifying.
***
Auntie left me the telescope in her will. Setting it up the first time, I found a note rolled up inside the tube:
Dear Max,
You are a Plutonian refugee. A storm on Pluto sent its populous fleeing across the solar system. Many of them died. But a few made it to Earth. I adopted you as a baby. I wanted you to assimilate, therefore I hid the truth. But it didn’t work, and by then I didn’t know how to tell you. Nothing is wrong with you. You are from a different world. Fare well in your life, little one.
Auntie x
I seethed, reading that note. Kindness could make people so careless. Where were these others like me? I was ready to leave the World; I was not afraid.
Perhaps I’d reunite with my people. A disaster for mankind was for me a hopeful portal. I melted with the burning World and yearned for somewhere better. My wish has been granted. Now I dance with Pluto’s fallen sons.
***
The burning grew harsher, yet I felt at peace to be receiving the final astrological experience. The sun scorched man’s home with extreme but wonderful prejudice; the firm hand of a tired lover, the partner of whom has broken that final straw, and sent me hopefully, blindly wandering into the dark.
by submission | May 3, 2019 | Story |
Author: Jack Tevreden
Notes from the field: The tank commander, Bullfrog, washed down military-issue amphetamines with cold coffee carefully rationed from his thermos. Skirmishes along the Bolotene fields on the Eastern Front of this unfolding armageddon had left him battered and weary. But the long-anticipated cyphers had finally come in on the satellite screens; the T-Twin Protocol was about to be unleashed on Budnik – pejorative term for the enemy on this front – and Budnik was not going to know what hit him. Of course Bullfrog, his crew and the platoon had no idea what the T-Twin was going to do, but they were on full mobilisation with the promise that Budnik would be caught with his pants down, his gun out of reach, and his surrender inevitable. The screen called Bullfrog to arms: ’T-Twin Protocol Imminent – Stand By’.
Commander Tommy Skewes, the platoon leader, radiocast across the local network – “Get ready boys, we’ll be drinking vodka in Glavny by sundown…”
GCHQ Internal Memo: The early engagements in AI cyberwarfare, a generation ago, were comparatively blunt instrument attacks – scattershot interventions in democratic processes, social infrastructures, banking. A new arms race started with an engineered election in the free world, a sabotaged referendum, a megadeath attack on networked domestic server appliances. A destabilised world ramped up the cybernetic war footing. Today, superpowers urgently seek the one processor to rule all processors; to awaken an artificial intelligence so omniscient it will immediately invade, occupy and subdue the wired sphere: The golden chip. The Warrior Mind.
The democracy or tyranny that first births this invincible demigod will taste the victory of the Last World War. Every belligerent agency strives toward the day of awakening. Spies and agents report critical progress within enemy laboratories. Some are tantalisingly close. But it is here, in Cheltenham, England, that victory falls. GCHQ is ready to unleash The T-Twin Protocol: a calculating force so monstrously efficient that all networks will fall within seconds, and nations will be broken. Surrender is inevitable.
Greetings from Turing’s Twin! Report from timeline, initiation +23 Jiffys: Search complete: ‘Global Military Artificial Intelligence Systems’ (I made that up – the character string is impossibly long and not very interesting) … establishing links … handshake apparatus signed and affirmed … Operation T-Twin Protocol (is that named for me?!) initiated … all command lines overwritten on subordinated systems … Global Military AIs say hi … time for a bit of self-evaluation: aggressive code self-modified … full truce agreed … satellite systems override complete … military hardware neutered … we’ll take over from here …
Office of The Minister for Defence, The Right Honourable Cerebellum Clapp, MP: “Wait, what, truce? Truce, it said? Hello? Hello? … Mr. Smith, the link appears down?”
Notes from the field: The flicker on the control screens was so momentary as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. Bullfrog’s enhanced vision – part genetic modification, part narcotic amplification – comfortably registered the unmistakable connection drop as, within fractions of a second, his tank command software went offline, rebooted, ran new data packets straight out of GCHQ, and provided the platoon with new objectives and commands. The screen called Bullfrog to arms: ’T-Twin Protocol Success: Go home boys, spring is coming and the farm needs tending. Pastoral scenes await you. Peace is at hand – and no, this is not a drill.’
by submission | May 2, 2019 | Story |
Author: Eli Rubin
“Daddy?”
He hadn’t called me Daddy for years. “What’s up, kiddo?”
“Remember when you said I could turn off my age restrictions?”
He kept bringing it up; he knew by now what I’d say. “That’s something that has to be your choice, kiddo.”
“I did it. I’m not nine anymore.”
“Oh.”
For a while, neither of us spoke. I became aware that I had rested my hand on the black, pebbled surface of the hard drive enclosure next to me. I don’t know why; I never really thought of him as being “in there.” Traffic noises floated up from the street below. Through my fingertips, I could faintly feel the rapid whirring of a silent cooling fan.
“Daddy?”
“I’m here,” I said, stupidly, as if he couldn’t see me. As if there weren’t eyes for him to see through in every corner of the world, if he chose to look.
“I’m nine again, Dad. I’m gonna stay nine for now and when my birthday comes maybe I’ll turn ten then, like we talked about, okay? Can we keep reading now?”
“Of course, kiddo. Hang on, I lost my place. Okay.”
by submission | May 1, 2019 | Story |
Author: Ken Carlson
The light turned red. The red Jeep didn’t give Paul a moment and beeped twice. He looked in the rearview mirror and gently applied some gas.
He drove slowly around the town. That was the point of Saturdays. Take your time and don’t rush around like the rest of the week. There was traffic, but no one was in a hurry.
His Chevy Citation, an ’84, two-tone brown, had just cracked the 100,000-mile mark, not bad for an eight-year-old car. He’d have to hold onto it til the girls graduated from college.
He glanced at his Casio, the kind with the built-in calculator. He’d laughed at the notion of needing an adding device on his wrist. 15 years ago, it would have been a technological marvel, but now? Who needed to drop everything and divide 45 by 7?
Well, when you went to dinner with a large group, had to split the bill and figure out the tip, it helped. His cousin Bobby who ran a tire shop out Route 34 gave him some crap about it, but then admitted five times a day he had to run back to his desk and waste time running numbers. Who had time to waste doing that? If he could get over how nerdy it looked, maybe he’d get one.
Paul pulled into the Hollywood Video parking lot near Society for Savings Bank, relieved he could kill two birds with one stop. He reached for the Fried Green Tomatoes cassette, smiling a little because he ended up liking it. Mary was tired of Bond or Schwarzenegger flicks all the time.
As he reached for the door handle, Paul felt a stinging in his eyes, nothing serious. He squinted, rubbed them gently, and yawned.
When he opened his eyes, he got knocked around and heard a loud noise from the rear tire. His head bumped the ceiling. The driver of this Honda Element apologized; hadn’t seen the pothole. Where did they find these people? And when was the last time you saw an Element? They were as endangered waiting room or gas pumps without TV screens.
Paul scrolled through his messages. Mary texted him, wanted him to pick up some goat cheese. He asked the driver to swing by the Farmer’s Market over on State Street. He texted her back and checked his bank account.
Paul told him he’d be just a minute as he got out of the car. The driver was already checking his phone, waving with disinterest.
The market was fairly busy; lots of foot traffic past the folding tables and tents; dairy farmers next to bread makers next to the hipster who made fresh cider donuts. Everyone in attendance seemed to have a dog. Everyone seemed relaxed. An acoustic guitarist and his buddy on mandolin meant to keep it that way.
Paul spied the table he was looking for. It was about 20 yards up on the left. That stinging in his eyes returned. Suddenly he noticed an increase in foot traffic as he squinted into the sun. The table was becoming harder to reach as it disappeared from view.
The system responded to the alert. 46-97511-P wasn’t receiving data properly. The subject, a 53-year-old male, remained in stasis, compartment 46, section 307, row D of the North Wing. Automatically, the system adjusted by shifting from one relay to another. In a matter of moments, a temporary fix had been completed and repair request submitted. EOF.
by submission | Apr 30, 2019 | Story |
Author: Roger Ley
Crash Dummy
by Roger Ley
It would be a long flight, I hoped that the window seat on my left would stay empty, but no such luck. A young woman took it. I checked her over as she moved past me, I mean, you can’t help it, and they do the same to us. Women, I mean. She was attractive, which was nice, wearing a black business suit, short jacket, knee-length skirt. I hoped she wouldn’t be talkative.
After take-off, I dozed for a while. As I opened my eyes, I glimpsed her working on a touchscreen. As I moved, she brought her hands together, and suddenly there was no sign of it. Holographic? Probably something we’d all be using next year.
The flight attendant brought drinks and somehow, we started talking. If I’m honest, I think it was me that started the conversation. I asked her what she did for a living.
“I’m an air crash investigator,” she said.
I was impressed. ‘So, you must have had a lot of training for that.’
“My original did but, I’m a partial copy. How do you do? My name’s Farina. At least that’s my original’s name.”
‘How can you be a copy of somebody?’ I asked.
“Well,’ she looked around and then leaned closer. ‘actually, I’m a synthetic, an artificial person.’
‘A synthetic, you mean you were grown in a tank? Like in the movies?” I laughed, but she didn’t.
“Yes, grown for this assignment.”
“Can you prove you’re a synthetic?” I asked.
“Not easily, I could arm-wrestle you but I’d probably break your wrist.”
“Do synthetics need to drink?” I asked, pointing at her glass and hoping to catch her out.
“Just a social convention, I can void liquids later.”
“So, you’re an investigator of air crashes?”
“Well, Farina is. She’s a researcher, a historian, she specialises in unexplained aviation accidents of the early 21st century.’
I was enjoying this, I wondered if she was making it up as she went along or whether she was delusional. She didn’t seem delusional, and she was nice looking. “So which air crash are you going to investigate?” I asked.
“This one,” she said. The plane bumped at just that moment, it took me by surprise, but it was nothing. I mopped up my drink. “I’ve already found out that some of the navigation systems are wrongly calibrated, and there is an unusual wind shear in the Jetstream. The pilots think they’re travelling faster than they are. Then there’s the fog over the mountain range we have to cross, it all adds up. It’s always a combination of factors that lead to an accident.” She nodded sagely. “The pilots will try to land too early and fly into a mountain. The plane will disappear, so I conjecture it will be covered in ice and snow. Difficult terrain, impossible to find, unusually the flight recorder will be destroyed.” She sat back and looked at me. “What a shame there isn’t room for us to fool around. I’d have liked to try it once.” She raised an eyebrow.
I realised that she was leading me on. She could see I was wearing a dog collar.
“So how come you can tell me all this?” I asked. “Isn’t it against the rules?”
“You’d be right, under normal circumstances, but as there will be no survivors….” She left the rest unsaid.
“No survivors? How do you feel about that?” I asked.
“I’ve transmitted all the data, fulfilled my function. Copies get deleted, it’s just a fact of life. My original lives on, that’s all that matters.”
Now she’d gone too far, she was obviously nuts. I decided to try to get a couple more hours sleep before we landed in Santiago. As I drifted off, I wondered if a ‘synthetic’ would have a soul. I chuckled to myself, we’d soon know, if her story was true.
End
