by submission | Nov 28, 2016 | Story |
Author : Matthew Harrison
The mood in the meeting room, dominated by the large screen, was subdued. Only the tall silver-haired figure of James sat unperturbed, yet like the others he was waiting. The younger executives fidgeted.
“How long’s it going to be today?” said Marty, unable to keep silent any longer. “It’s getting worse and worse.” Curly-haired and sharp-suited, he was the rising star of the company – and looked as though he didn’t want to be there at all.
Sandra, looping blonde hair over one ear, glanced at the screen for the umpteenth time. “Nope, still engaged.”
Marty snorted. “What happened to parallel processing?” he appealed to the group. “I thought that was what we were supposed to get.”
One of the other executives mumbled, “Can’t we meet remotely? Don’t see why we have to bloody well be in the same room.” He got up as if to leave.
“I would stay if I were you,” James said quietly. The executive stopped, checked his phone, and sat down again.
Time passed. Sandra got up and adjusted the blinds now that the sun had gone behind the adjacent building. Sitting down, she flipped again through the PowerPoint that she had printed out, murmuring, “China, China, China,” under her breath. Then without looking up, she said, “I’m learning Mandarin, you guys.”
There was a general groan.
Marty had a copy of the PowerPoint too. He leaned towards James, stabbing the document with his forefinger. “What is the basis for this? We are committing everything to China, but it doesn’t show the demand – or even why we’re doing it. This plan,” he flipped through the pages, “it’s a complete black box.”
“We go forward in faith,” James said, without looking at the document, “as we have always done.”
Something in his senior’s complacency riled Marty. “I thought algorithms were supposed to give us analysis,” he objected. “Deep learning, big data, and stuff. Yet look at this – it’s just ramming China down our throats!” He brandished the PowerPoint at his colleague.
“And who wrote the algo anyway?” he continued as James remained unmoved. “Shouldn’t we have him as Chief Executive?”
James cleared his throat. “It’s not the analysis that counts in the end. It’s the wisdom. How all the factors are weighted, run through their dynamics, and distilled into a single mission statement – a China mission statement, if you will. That’s what we’re paying for, or what the shareholders are paying for.”
“But if you can’t re-perform the analysis?” Marty put a finger into the air. “It’s just…”
“…Animal spirits.” James completed the sentence for him. “Randomness. The same as it always was.” He was still sitting with arms folded.
Marty threw up his hands. “God help us!”
The big screen flickered. James raised an eyebrow. The other executives composed themselves and sat up, ready to receive instructions.
An iconic image of a samurai warrior appeared on the screen. “I want you all to focus,” intoned the CE, its voice slightly mechanical. “It’s the next big thing. I want you to live and think and breathe Japan…”
by submission | Nov 27, 2016 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
“Of course I’ll miss you Serge. I love you” Ren said over-compensating.
“Don’t act rash. It’s a small glitch. The error log’s sent and the patch fix will be here soon” Her voice now a car crash, teetering on the edge of conviction.
Slumped in the kitchen drawer, I rose, wrestled despair from my hairy eyelids, then caught a smirk fading on her face.
“Really?” I shrilled. Springing to my feet and looking up at her.
“I’m stuck in this and you’re laughing at me?” gesturing at my tiny furry body.
Her clenched jaw buttressing a flood of laughter.
“It’s the System that’s a joke, not you Serge. Having your hard-light projection crash like that can’t be easy, especially when it turns you into a cute squirrel, with a big cuddly tail”
She giggled, then reached out teasingly to stroke my tail.
I angrily whipped it away and leapt onto the kitchen bench.
“Another nut” She pointed.
I glanced at the peanut in my tiny squirrel hand and placed it carefully in a bowl on the bench.
“I keep finding them” I sighed through beady eyes. Then took a settling breath and bounced away.
“I’m grateful Ren” My high pitched voice echoed from behind the fridge.
“If System hadn’t scanned my brain after the accident, I wouldn’t be here with you. But I’m a grown man, not a rodent. I have needs!” I stabbed my tiny claws into the air.
“I know Darling” She smiled.
Fine whiskers surfaced from a bowl of grapes.
“Nut” She giggled, pointing again.
I added it to the bowl and the strain surrendered on my tiny squirrel face.
“I’ve had enough Ren. I want it to stop” I buried my face in my hands.
Silence grew like a freezing fog.
The sound of a new system notification scared the quietness away and Ren quickly responded.
“Play new message”
System’s gentrified voice rang out.
“Squirrelfix patch download now available”
Silence stretched an unknown moment.
“Just one more chance Serge” Ren begged.
“Fine. One more” I said stubbornly from inside the bread bin and leapt down to the floor.
“System. Install Squirrelfix” I ordered.
An Alice in Wonderland sense of perspective overcame me.
Ren gaped.
“What?” I queried.
“Well am I me?” I asked.
She pointed towards the mirror and I returned a smile at the reflection of my human form.
I turned and a huge squirrel tail flicked up like a hairy anaconda.
I gritted my teeth and angrily reached for it. Chasing air circles like Grandma’s stupid dog.
She bellowed with laughter, unable to hold back anymore as dizziness threw me head first into the fridge door.
I steadied myself and got to my feet, spiking a nut I had found into the bowl.
“That’s it!” I shouted and stormed into the Living Room.
“Request shutdown system access. Authorise Serge Braithwaite. Password….” I said loudly.
“No Serge. No!” Ren butted in, yelling.
I gave Ren a look of determination.
“R943YX”
System responded.
“System is currently experiencing shutdown request overload. Please try again later”
I collapsed on the couch staring into space and Ren slowly joined me.
After a long while, I looked down and opened my hand revealing another nut. Ren snickered, then reached over and grabbed it, her rose perfume washing over me.
“I like nuts you know” She whispered.
I watched in horror as she tossed it into her mouth.
She cheekily looked at me as she slowly began to chew.
“Yeah I know” I said.
“But not as much as me” And climbed on top of her.
by submission | Nov 24, 2016 | Story |
Author : Angela McQuay
It was a fern. Just a fern. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. Granted, it’s a big fucking fern, sitting over there in the corner of the living room on its sturdy steel legs, like a sentinel keeping watch.
My wife Joy rescued it from Ol’ Mrs. Nesbitt, our neighbor who pleaded with her to find it a new home, that she just couldn’t take care of it any longer. “Take care of it?” I’d asked. “It’s just a fucking fern.” But of course I’d agreed because I’d pretty much let Joy do whatever she wanted. I loved her. Love her.
So we watered it. Trimmed it. Joy even talked to it, something I found amusing until the day Smokey disappeared. I told myself she must have snuck out the door when we were bringing in groceries, as my wife suggested. “She’ll come back,” she insisted. “Cats always do.” But she didn’t. And the thought crept in that Ol’ Mrs. Nesbitt had once had a yappy little dog named Troy who’d regularly wake us up at 5 am with his insistent yipping. Until one day, he didn’t.
Just a fern, nothing sinister. How could a fucking fern be sinister for God’s sake? The fronds aren’t moving by themselves, that’s a breeze from the (closed) window. The grumbling noises coming from the corner of the room are from the apartment’s old radiator (which isn’t that old). A fern, certainly nothing to do with Joy not coming home one night, then the next. Just a fern, I keep telling myself. Smokey snuck out the back door, Troy found a new owner who could walk him every morning, Joy slipped on some ice, cracked her head, is in a hospital bed somewhere I haven’t found yet.
Just a fern.
by submission | Nov 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
Patient 7 lapsed into v-fib, triggering his brain implant and the one in Dr. Gottfried, miles away, who dropped his tuna salad sandwich and slumped in his office chair.
“What’s happening to me?” thought the patient,” as he looked down on the Code Blue Team working feverishly below.
“Ventricular fibrillation. Your heart’s not pumping,” thought Dr. G., right there with him floating over the scene.
“Why am I flying? Am I dead?”
“Yes.” The doctor was distracted by the paper card his assistant, Shaylene, had taped to an IV pole. “You’re clinically dead.”
‘I LOVE U,’ the card read.
“You love me?” thought the patient.
“No, she loves…”
A tunnel appeared, bright light emanating from within.
“Clear,” said someone below.
BAM! A thousand volts from the defibrillator melted the patient’s implant.
“Are you OK?” asked Shaylene.
Sitting up, “Did you mean what you wrote?”
Flicking tuna salad from his lab coat, “But that could only be read from above…”
“Did you mean it?”
“With all my heart.”
That very afternoon, they were engaged.
“Congratulations,” said a member of the review board. “But about that patient? They stabilized his heart, only to discover he was brain dead from your implant.”
“Regrettable…”
“You’re supposed to be investigating your patients’ near death experiences, not euthanizing them. Four fatalities. Three brain deaths. Your experiment is a FAILURE!”
“My experiment is a SUCCESS. I floated with them. I saw the tunnel.”
“So you say. Regrettably, Dr. Gottfried, we must…”
He didn’t hear the end of that sentence, because Patient 8 was thinking, “OHMYGODI’MDEAD,” as the two floated above the Code Blue Team.
“Don’t panic. They might still bring you back.”
BAM! The defibrillator discharged into the flailing heart.
“I’m a goner.”
“Your brain is still functioning and,” proudly, “so is the new implant.”
But as he thought that, the monitor displayed a flat line.
A tunnel appeared, bright light emanating from within.
“I’ve proven they are true,” thought the doctor, “those NDEs related by patients who came back…”
“I’m coming back?”
BAM! Another shock.
“Am I gonna make it, doc?”
Glancing again at the flat line on the monitor, “No. You’re past that. You’re a…”
“Calling time of death at 10:41,” said someone below.
“goner.”
They watched the team disperse and found themselves drawn toward the tunnel, as if by magnetism.
“What’s happening, doc?”
“I have no idea. This isn’t medicine. This is… supernatural.”
“I’m passing over, aren’t I?”
Confused, “Maybe… or maybe your dying brain is comforting you with one final dream.”
“He’s right,” came a thought from the tunnel.
“Who’s right?”
“HE is.”
“Which one of us? Me or him?”
“HIM.”
“He’s passing over?”
“Right.”
“To what? The afterlife? Heaven?”
“To a different state.”
“Wait, what are you? The Grim Reaper? An angel? An angel who speaks English?”
“I’m not ‘speaking English.’ He’s translating my thoughts into your language. And I’m not an angel. I’m… what you call energy. Dark energy.”
Not surprised that he wasn’t surprised, “So, this IS science, after all.”
“Science?” thought Patient 8.
“I’m no physicist, but I know they suspect the universe is full of dark energy and that it’s pulling everything apart, causing things to expand. They don’t know the source of that energy…”
Patient 8 was sucked into the tunnel, disappearing in the light.
“What happened to him?”
The light pulsated.
“I changed him.”
“From matter to energy?”
“From one form of energy, what you call a ‘soul,’ to another. He had no choice, but you, you can willingly join a universe of…”
“NO!”
He awakened to learn that he was no longer ‘Doctor’ Gottfried or Shaylene’s fiance.
by submission | Nov 22, 2016 | Story |
Author : David K Scholes
Galactic Commitment
“You performed well,” said my unit commander mark 5A droid “courage above and beyond the call of duty and all that.”
“They were only virtual reality simulations,” I tried to hose his excessive yet perceptibly mechanical enthusiasm down a bit.
“Sometimes – when you are in there – it can be hard to tell the difference,” the droid persisted. “You went equally well in the urban pacification scenario and the off world mil-intervention scenario. No, I think my boy that you are ready for the real thing now – for actual combat!”
I bristled even at the thought. “Hey – it was just entertainment for me, admittedly at times some pretty hairy entertainment – but basically an interactive virtual reality game for all of that. That I paid for the privilege of playing too,” I added
“You turned out to be a lot better than you thought you would be eh?” my interactive virtual reality commander continued. “You do realise anyone scoring higher than 85000 in two combat simulations can be called up involuntarily.”
That was news to me and a puzzled look must have shown on my face.
“Oh!” he replied “perhaps you didn’t read the fine print in your contract? You know how bad the manpower situation is now. Trying to satisfy our senior partners in the Galactic commitment? Anyone under 95 has to have a pretty good reason for not being prepared to front up when requested. An even better reason if they have scored as well as you in combat simulations.”
I realised then I wasn’t going to be able to get out of it. Curse me for scoring so well in the game. For even entering it.
* * *
It was true what my old unit commander, correction interactive virtual reality unit commander, had said. That once you are in there in combat it can be hard to tell the difference between reality and virtual reality. My early real combat missions seemed pretty much like the virtual reality simulations. Relatively easy.
There was the physical toll of course despite all our advanced equipment. Yet the R & R spells helped a lot. Our senior partners in the Galactic commitment, and just about every one was senior to poor old Earth, spared no expense. Healing energy baths, yielding force field type cushion recliners, fantastic levitating wheelless wheelchairs. Wonder drugs to bring us safely down from the wonder drugs we had been fighting on. Other wonder drugs to take us safely back up again.
Still it got harder. A cumulative tiredness that the R & R couldn’t quite overcome. Physically we probably could have gone on longer but the mental weariness got to you.
As Earth’s manpower shortage became ever more acute the authorities, under pressure from above, kept lowering the physical standards and raising the age limit for combat recruits.
Our senior partners, the Vrell, the Spleeth, and the Dhleene among them had not been bothered about the price tag. Just as long as Earth did their dirty work for them and their own citizens were spared.
We continue to fight on – the old men and sometimes old women of Earth. Most of us now know that we will not see our home again.
I do not care to think of the consequences for Earth when we can no longer keep up our end of the Galactic commitment.
End
