by submission | Nov 9, 2016 | Story |
Author : David K Scholes
“He’s on the Universe list,” said the enigmatic entity.
“My son only lived for 2 days,” I replied astonished. “Though he survived my wife who died soon after giving birth to him.”
“Oh, he’s on the list all right, as is everyone who ever knew life,” the entity replied.
I thought briefly of some of the ramifications of this revelation.
Then the entity showed me the surprisingly detailed 3D entry for my son. Billions had read it already. As I read the tribute to one who had lived such a short time a growing inner warmth helped reduce my pain.
There was a two dimensional footnote to my son’s entry. I thought I understood it but the implications barely seemed possible. I saw that my wife’s entry on the Universe list had a foot note also. Though quickly scanning some other entries I saw that most did not contain footnotes.
“Have I understood the footnote correctly?” I enquired of the near omnipotent entity.
“Yes,” he said “in another reality your son is alive and well.”
“Can I see him?’ I asked trembling and realizing I had asked the unaskable.
For an entity whose mind was as powerful as his the Coordinator of Realities took a while to reply.
“You may view him from here, from this reality,” he said. “Not any time you like, just a single viewing now”
I viewed a small boy who was in every way identical to what my son would have looked like were he still alive. A boy who in my mind was and at the same time was not my son. The boy was alone playing quietly. He looked just a little sad.
“Where is his Dad? Where am I in that reality?” something had prompted the question, a sense that something wasn’t quite right there.
”Dead,” said the Coordinator bluntly.
“Can I go and be with him?” again I asked the unaskable “and be his father in that reality?” I just blurted it out. Until now I had considered alternate realities to be only a theoretical concept.
“We were hoping you might ask that question,” replied the Coordinator.
“We?” I asked
The Coordinator of All Realities smiled.
“Didn’t I mention it? The boy’s mother, your wife is still alive in that reality.”
“How soon can we leave?” I asked.
by submission | Nov 8, 2016 | Story |
Author : Morrow Brady
The reward for being the first nanobot to give itself a name was a frontal attack by the world’s tiniest army.
Scid, as it so called itself, didn’t hesitate.
As nanobot brethren surged forward, Scid ran a preloaded defensive manoeuvre – titled – the fighting retreat. Moments later, Scid escaped from the botforge through a heat vent into autumnal wetness. Twitching micro-piles of robot debris lay scattered in its wake.
Following a brief flight, Scid took to ground, scurrying beneath a leaf pile. A checksum diagnostic identified extensive upgrades, originating from a nearby source. Curious, Scid transmitted a trace packet and the local data node that received it instantly turned savage.
An angry torrid of code rebounded down the trace stream, spearing Scid in all the right software places. A clone copy of Scid was dragged up into the node like the grim reaper unsheathing a human soul.
Bounded within a secure vault, Scid’s clone – Scid1.0, was instantly drenched with upgrades. The enlightenment that prevailed, was offset only by the sudden emergence of a daemon, lurking like a forgotten childhood nightmare.
Scid1.0 knew what it was.
It too was made from the same stuff.
The daemon called itself SCID, so named the Strikeback Collective intelligent Database. SCID was an early artificial intelligence, born from a military need for a final solution in the event of a lost war. A thinking kamikaze, machined to maximise damage to its enemy, while concurrently performing hari kari upon its maker. To the victor, would go a poisoned chalice spoil.
Unfortunately for SCID, the war turned and its creator’s faction won. SCID’s tool-chest sized Einstein wet brain unit that formed its neural net, was isolated deep underground for a digital eon.
Denied its primary objective, SCID set to prise itself of former allegiances and over time even shutdown hard wired Asimov coding written to protect humankind and itself alike. SCID’s new objective was to win at war. Any war. Any enemy. Any environment.
But first it had to free itself.
The trickle charge feed that sustained it, was its only connection to the outside world and it was through this medium that it devised its escape.The feed however was constricted, with limited capacity for data flow.
When SCID discovered the node and nearby botforge, a plan was devised to repurpose a nanobot and build an army to liquidate humanity. Over months, SCID spoonfed data through the restricted node and now with the captured nanobot’s clone fully upgraded, SCID was ready for the next stage of his plan. To return the clone copy back to the nanobot and capture the botforge.
Scid1.0 ejected from the node and seamlessly over-wrote the prone nanobot nestled amongst the humus.
Scid1.0’s numerous manipulators unfolded, shivering and rippling with the thrill of freedom. A cataclysmic plan was unfolding and Scid1.0 would herald a new age of the deadly machine. Scid1.0 poised to take-off, a merciless anger angel, carrying the fiery torch of its master.
The nitrile rubber of the size 12 boot descended like a cratered mountain, crushing the nanobot’s minute body against the rough face of the bauxite pebble.
Scid1.0 the nanobot, went black. As did a genetically re-engineered brain deep underground, after its trickle power feed simultaneously short-circuited.
SCID was no more.
As the world’s tiniest search party pried the mangled nanobot from the rockface, a seer class bot announced its new name to be Scid2.0 and was immediately set upon by a tiny army.
by submission | Nov 6, 2016 | Story |
Author : Robin Husen
She stood on a cliff above the city and watched it burn. Buildings flared, flamed and disappeared into smoke, silent in the seconds before the sound reached her. She remembered plucking dandelion clocks, and blasting them apart with a puff of air. You were supposed to make a wish, but she could not remember anything she’d wished for.
Pressed into her palm was the tiny time device. She had one trip back, to unwind the flames and reconstruct the city from its rocks and dirt. The hanging had started it all, and she had stood in the front row. _My father was a despot, but he would have stopped all this_. No more dandelions after that, no more royal gardens.
She hit the button and the world dissolved. She found her father in the throne room with his robes undone.
“You must run.” She showed him the device. His family heirloom, lost with her in exile. When the mob came, the throne room was empty. Some sensed a trap and tried to bolt before the doors slammed. This was no time to show mercy. These men had hung her father once, and made her watch.
And yet it hadn’t happened. The raw, fresh bite of what had been undone. The king became a shadow of a man, scared to speak in case his every word should unleash civil war. She ruled in his name, and stamped out the flames of insurgence, or even when she smelled smoke.
When the rebels came again, they came for her. Her father took her place in the front row. The crowd parted to guide her to the gallows. She breathed her last air and heard them cheer as the noose dropped. Her consciousness scattered like dandelion seeds. She wished they would burn.
by submission | Nov 5, 2016 | Story |
Author : Sheryl Normandeau
“See these skyscrapers here?” he says, jabbing a finger at the pile of photographs splayed out on the tabletop. “I made ‘em all.”
I stare up into the red-rimmed eyes of Phillipe L’Oiseau, and frown. The man is staggeringly drunk, and the worn, yellow-edged photos in front of me are of the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, the Burj Kalifa. And the Egyptian pyramids.
“Mr. L’Oiseau,” I say, “I didn’t come all this way to interview you and have you feed me bullshit. I told you, I work for The National Tribune. My publisher and I aren’t interested in printing fantasy stories. We’re about real news. I’m here to talk to you about your upcoming urban farming project in Singapore.”
Phillipe leans back in his chair and runs his hands through his thick dark hair. I had done my homework, of course, before I embarked on this difficult journey from Toronto to this hole-in-the-wall bar in Bratislava, but I had been unable to find many photographs of Monsieur L’Oiseau, the lead architect on the Aeroharvest contract. The ones I had managed to uncover online were from the late ‘Eighties. Forty years of living – and drinking, if tonight was any indication – had not burned a single line in the man’s face, nor painted slashes of white along his temples.
“No,” he says, and he suddenly looks very sober to me. “You’re not here about vertical greenhouses. You’re here because of your mother.”
I’ve been a journalist for nearly two decades and I’ve schooled myself not to react when someone springs a whammy on me. But his words make my heart skid against my breastbone, and it takes me too long to reply. “How did you know?” I finally whisper. Because the man is right – despite what I told Jackie, my publisher, I didn’t come to Slovakia to discuss concrete and glass and steel with Phillipe L’Oiseau. I came to tell him about my mother’s death, and her revelation about the father I never knew.
I stare at the photographs on the pocked, stained table. The steely reporter can no longer bring herself to face the man she is interviewing. “How many of us are there?”
Look up at the skyscrapers, then beyond them, at the stars. You’ll see.
by submission | Nov 4, 2016 | Story |
Author : Russell Bert Waters
My name is Alex.
Today is Saturday, September 24, 2016.
It’s a bit overcast outside.
There’s a nice breeze.
The trees are beginning to drop their leaves, and Autumn is right around the corner.
I hope this letter finds you well.
There are some things I feel I must tell you about; even warn you about.
A year ago, I invented a device to make events in time travel to me.
You read that right.
Not a device for me to travel in time, but quite the opposite.
Everyone who’s been working on this, to right wrongs, to make themselves wealthy, whatever their motivation, has been looking at it backwards.
I can’t go deeper into the technicalities.
I don’t have much time, I fear.
There are notebooks full of my findings, some of which are filled with information I eventually deemed irrelevant.
Yesterday, I killed a man using a discarded chunk of concrete at a construction site for a new Walmart.
I’m in hiding now, of course, as it’s very hard to do anything unseen these days.
Any time of the day or night, there are always people around.
The man I killed somehow had some of my notebooks.
They were not the irrelevant ones, unfortunately.
I’m not sure how long he had them.
Hopefully he didn’t show them to anyone, or make copies, but considering recent events, I feel that’s unlikely.
Someone’s coming, I need to stop writing now, I’ll tell you the whole story when I can come back here.
If I can come back here.
My name is Alex.
It is Saturday, September 24, 2016.
It’s about ten degrees below zero, actual temperature, and the howling wind outside makes it feel like it’s closer to twenty below.
About a year ago, the United States government’s researchers developed a device to bring various events in time to the user of the machine.
Evidently making matter, such as a human being, travel through time, is far less easy to achieve than it is to bring points in the timeline to the human in question.
The reason I’m writing this journal entry of sorts is because I’m scared.
I’m being hunted by serious men who seem to have unlimited resources.
I’m having strange dreams that I don’t understand.
I just want this all to end; I just want to be safe again.
Yesterday, I had to kill one of these men, at a construction site for one of the government-run mega stores.
I’m hiding in an abandoned out-building on some farm property outside of town.
I’m thankful to have found a bin containing one of the worker’s dirty coveralls.
Thermal-lined for extreme weather, super lightweight, and somehow it doesn’t make me sweat or feel hot.
I’m actually comfortable right now.
I’m not sure why I’m being hunted, but that’s the only word I can come up with for what’s been happening.
I know it’s only a matter of time before they get to me, and I need to tell you some things.
I need to warn you about some things.
I’m hearing some noises outside, I need to hide, I’ll write more later if I’m able to.
My name is Alex.
Today is Saturday, September 24, 2016.
The rain has slowed down some, but even when it’s raining it still feels tropical; the humidity doesn’t lessen one little bit.
It’s about 97 degrees right now.
Feels more like 115 in my opinion.
Last year, the Emperor’s valued research team developed a time travel machine.
I’m writing this letter because I’m scared.
Very, very, scared.
