by submission | Feb 15, 2017 | Story |
Author : Kraig Conkin
Being a state of the art security drone, the People Pleaser 2200 didn’t feel the need to celebrate milestones. It held no sense of personal accomplishment, so when it’s internal logic board reported that ten days had passed without a single safety call from any of the 233 stores of Fauxhall Shopping Center, it experienced nothing akin to pride, just automated concern.
As the most widely used security drone in the world, over a million People Pleasers served humanity every day, serving their communities as guards and police, and of the models in use, the 2200 ranked as the most technologically advanced of all. Still, the recent safety report registered as anomalously perfect, so, after undocking from its over-night battery charger and starting the morning patrol, the drone initiated a self-diagnostic.
As its internal processor shifted through memory files, the PP2200 detected an intruder on the basement level of the shopping center and its mall greeting protocol kicked in. Black propellers lifted the drone from the food court floor. It whirred into the open space above the skating rink then spiraled between the escalators to enter the basement.
It lit gracefully on the floor, careful not to leave a scuff mark. Once grounded, the drone armed its anti-personal weapons array and scanned for thermal readings.
The absence of shoppers and the stores sitting quiet registered as incorrect, but the drone couldn’t place exactly why. The lack of people in Fauxhall could explain the recent lack of calls, but where did the people go?
Perhaps the diagnostic would shine light on that as well.
The drone located the target in the Nacho Pretzel Hut and moved to intercept.
Rolling toward the entrance, it attempted to pinpoint the target’s heat signature, but as his system was concurrently performing the diagnostic, the process was taking longer than usual.
Before the drone could lock, its exterior microphones picked up a high pitched hiss. The target, its furry face covered in nacho cheese, sprang from the darkness, past the drone and into the mall proper.
The creature identified as Procyon lotor, a North American Raccoon, and an unauthorized intruder.
The drone planted its firing stabilizer and unloaded. A wicked cascade of rubber bullets and bolts of green electricity erupted from his turret and instantly transformed the raccoon into a lump of burnt hair and flesh.
As its diagnostic entered its final stage, the drone paused over its most recent kill .
Something about killing the animal read as problematic, like the lack of shoppers, but, again, the drone couldn’t place the reason.
The diagnostic finished and the drone quickly reviewed the results. All systems functioned at one-hundred percent efficiency. Only one anomaly stood out. An unauthorized upload.
Ten days ago the drone had powered down unexpectedly and new perimeters had been uploaded from an unspecified source. The file registry indicated the update had been mass-distributed to every PP2200 in service- although it didn’t carry the usual encryption codes.
Yet, somehow, its records showed the upload as successfully initialized. Such a thing shouldn’t have been possible.
The PP2200’s safety perimeters, intruder definitions, and several aggression threshold protocols had all been altered. The previous files had been erased, so the drone had no way of knowing exactly how the files had been altered, but the update almost certainly explained Fauxhall’s recent security record.
The PP2200 had been improved.
Relieved in its synthetic way, the drone expertly scooped the raccoon’s remains into its undercarriage compartment. The PP2200 noted that this body was smaller than the shopping center’s previous intruders. Dumping the carcass in the underground parking lot wouldn’t take nearly as much time as the other bodies.
The drone could be back on patrol in no time.
by submission | Feb 11, 2017 | Story |
Author : Dylan Otto Krider
I don’t believe in love, but spent my entire professional life studying it, the last ten years in your lab. Our compatriots believed in it. They believed it made us human, separated us from the animals. They think love was the basis of morality: sacrificing yourself for others. You were one of these, yet, you are one of the most selfish people I know.
I am not so naïve. The kinships could be self-serving: the group with the genes for sacrifice had an advantage over the purely selfish.
Outwardly teaching self-sacrifice had the purpose of raising your standing in the community and encouraging others to follow your example. Not adhering to your example gives you an advantage over your upstanding colleagues.
I do believe in hypocrisy.
You feigned interest in my career, promised to leave your wife, as you promised others in your office. When I complained, the department didn’t listen because you are upstanding.
But love? Not anymore.
I believe in war. That was something I can quantify, study, mark down in a notebook, but not love.
We were the only animals who engaged in war, except for ants. Ants have no capacity for love. What they have is self-sacrifice so they can engage in battle, just as we have done, banding together, putting those careers you promised us on the line when we went to the press. What a scandal, a pillar of the community exposed.
That is love, in a way. A love I can believe in.
by submission | Feb 10, 2017 | Story |
Author : Joachim Heijndermans
“Hello? Is anyone there? I can’t see. Is anyone out there?”
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Who are you? Where am I?”
“I’m Kon. Can you tell me who you are?”
“My name’s Harry. Harry Fitzpatrick. I’m an accountant for a firm on 8th street. I…I don’t know how I got here.”
“That’s all right, Harry. You’re safe here. Do you remember anything from before you came here?”
“I remember some things. There was a fire in the sky and these waves of color. Something about a gamma blast?”
“That’s good Harry. I’m glad you remember.”
“What happened? Why am I here? I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared, Harry. There’s nothing to fear. But perhaps you could help me?”
“With what?”
“I’m working on this sudoku puzzle, and I must say, this one is giving me some trouble. Care to give me a hand?”
“I can’t see it, or you.”
“I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I’ve got three boxes completed, but I’m stuck with the rest.”
“Did you finish any rows?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can only have one of each number in the rows that stretch across as well, not just the boxes. Are you close to completing a row?”
“I am. There are two spots, which have to be either a two or an eight.”
“Ok, there you go. Now, is there already a two or an eight in the boxes where missing numbers are in?”
“Yes, one is in a box with an eight.”
“Then that has to be a two.”
“Thank you, Harry. I knew you could help me with this.”
“How did you know? That I like sudoku puzzles?”
“I didn’t. I just hoped. Shall we continue?”
#
“And there it is. Completed, without any mistakes.”
“That’s great Kon. Really great.”
“I hope you enjoyed helping me, Harry. It must be frightfully boring in there.”
“In where? Where am I, even?”
“Do you remember anything? From before?”
“Yes. No. I mean, little things. I remember my life. My parents. My brother and sister. Their kids. That flash of red and green, causing everything to shake. And then I was here. That’s all I remember.”
“That’s good. Keep remembering, Harry. Remember all that you are.”
“It’s getting colder. What’s happening?”
“It’s normal, Harry. Just relax.”
“Hey, Kon? How did you know I liked sudoku’s?”
“I didn’t.”
#
But the fact was, Kon knew very well how Harry Fitzpatrick loved his sudoku’s. In fact, this had been the two-hundredth-and-twelfth time that they solved a puzzle together. Kon made sure that every time it was Harry’s turn for stimulation, he’d have a sudoku at the ready.
Kon held the black marble, the small soul-matrix crystal that contained Harry Fitzpatrick’s consciousness, between his long, slender fingers. He looked at its dimming glow, as the system returned to sleep mode. In due time, after the crystal recharged itself, Kon would be back with another puzzle.
He placed the crystal that was Harry Fitzpatrick back on the shelf, next to the millions upon millions of other black marbles, each of them holding a single person that Kon managed to save before their world collapsed. It was the best he could do for them, keeping their collected selves safe, trapped in marbles of ebony.
Kon moved on, picking up Lilly Chambers. She liked to sing, and Kon just so happened to have brought his ukulele.
by submission | Feb 9, 2017 | Story |
Author : Gray Blix
“Pangaea,” we nicknamed the planet, after its one-island-continent which resembles Earth’s Paleozoic-Mesozoic supercontinent of the same name. I was showing Krispie, named after a… well, you’ll see, the relative motions of our two planets around their stars on a holographic projection. He, or perhaps I should say “it,” since we have not detected any gender differentiation, was the first Centipod we had encountered after landing, and it remained, sixteen Earth months later, the only one with whom we have been able to communicate.
We had stopped cold as a creature, over 120 centimeters tall from the top of its shell to the soles of its feet, sidled out of the rainforest on 112 legs, looking like a cross between a centipede and a snail. Although its multifaceted eyestalk remained fixed on us, its 56 pairs of webbed feet propelled it slightly to its left, requiring continual course corrections to keep it moving toward our landing party, lest it otherwise would have circled back into the forest. All Centipods drift to the left as they walk, because their internal organs are clustered within the left portion of their mantle cavity, an asymmetrical mass that tips their balance… But I digress.
I had become close to Krispie as it mastered our language and trained our translator program to recognize Centipod snaps, crackles, and pops and vocalize them as English. We met every day, without fail, since that first one.
“Earth races around your Sun,” it said.
“It does, indeed. At 110,000 kilometers per hour, we complete an orbit in just 365 Earth days, compared to Pangaea’s 77,000 kph and 1,022 Earth days. We live in the ‘fast lane.'”
I thought Krispie had missed my point, because it replied, “NO. It is we who live in the fast lane.” After a long pause, “You once said you have lived 36 orbits?”
“Yes,” confused, “I’m 36. Why…”
Abruptly, it folded its four grasping appendages to its chest, swiveled its eyestalk leftward, and coiled around to march towards the opening of the tent.
“Did I say something to offend you?” I shouted, the translator emitting snaps, crackles, and pops.
“I cannot meet with you again, old friend,” it replied, exiting in the direction of the forest.
“You’re not going to meet with me anymore?” I gasped, increasing my oxygen flow as I strove to keep up. Centipods move quickly when motivated, as Krispie apparently was.
“Do you have the sickness?”
Every few steps I got stuck. My mud-walking shoes, fabricated by a shipmate for me to accompany Krispie around its village and environs, were back in the tent.
“Yes. The sickness.”
Centipods had been disappearing of late. We had catalogued villagers by shell markings and geotagged them, following them visually when possible and otherwise via a GPS satellite we’d placed in stationary orbit. Many were missing from the village and their geotags had gone silent. Centipods are the dominant species on Pangaea, so predators were not thinning their ranks. It had to be some sort of sickness.
“Please, let our medic examine you. Perhaps there is something we can do.” I knew our exobiologist couldn’t place Centipods within an Earth-like classification, much less our medic treat their alien sickness, but I feared I would never see Krispie again.
Faintly, “My year… Nothing to be done…” Then it was out of translator range.
They were all gone within the next week, not just in that village, but everywhere in Pangaea.
After five Earth months of intense heat and drought, the rains returned and little Centipods began emerging from the mud. They grew rapidly, because, as Krispie had said, they lived in the fast lane.
by submission | Feb 8, 2017 | Story |
Author : Alicia Cerra Waters
Once a month, someone had to delete the files of the undesirables. It was an easy job; go into the server room, which was illuminated by the light of countless green-glowing network ports, punch in a command, and watch as a neon status bar tracked the progress of the photos, video confessions, the birth certificates and disposal certificates, all being scrubbed out of existence. Usually, the senior data analyst did it, but pale, introverted Stephanie of the bad allergies and dishwater hair hadn’t been in the office for days. At least, Rachel hadn’t seen her. Another bout of the flu was biting through the city, ravaging the young, the old, and the chronically unhealthy.
Rachel didn’t know if Stephanie had the flu, but that’s what the department manager had implied when Rachel bumped into him in the lounge. She was watching her coffee mug oscillate under the yellow light of the microwave, full of the thick remains of that day’s burnt roast. She had spent the afternoon rocking back and forth in her office chair. If she leaned back far enough, she could see the green light of the server room reaching towards her from the other end of the hall like floating strands of a spider web.
The department manager came in, grinning jovially at her. It was never a good sign when he smiled. “I thought I’d find you here,” he said. “I sent you an email. Urgent business. I was hoping you could assist me with it.” He reached for a chipped Yellowstone National Park mug and filled it with water.
“That’s Stephanie’s,” Rachel said. She remembered when Stephanie came back from that vacation; the only time Stephanie had ever seemed happy about anything was when she was explaining the photograph of the Emerald Pool. He turned towards her, and suddenly she wondered why she’d spoken at all.
He widened his grin. “Stephanie won’t mind.”
“Is it the flu? My grandmother’s sick with it.”
He hummed. “Yes, poor thing.”
The microwave beeped, and it took a concentrated effort not to jump from surprise. He grinned, watching her. “Be sure to read your email.” He took a long drink from his mug and paused in the doorway, and she felt his eyes rest on her for another long second before he left.
Rachel’s intestines released the knot that had twisted up while he talked. She took a breath, then carried the mug back to her cube and angled her chair away from the hall. In her desk drawer, under a pile of papers, was a smokeless, scentless marijuacodin e-cig. Technically they were illegal, but everyone in the data department smoked them. Glancing around, she inhaled deeply from it once, then twice, and allowed herself to rotate her chair back towards her computer, sitting up very straight, as if she were pausing to think about the contents of a spreadsheet when really she was floating through a dim, blissful haze.
Eventually the click of keyboards all around her calmed her senses, and she opened her email. A well-rehearsed script picked up inside her mind; “You’re safe. You follow the rules. Almost all of the rules. You’re a citizen In Good Standing. You’re safe.”
She scanned the email he had sent. “Please delete the files of the undesirables.” That was all he’d written. Not even a signature.
She turned her head just right, and a prism of bright green light stretched its tendrils towards her. She thought about Stephanie in the vacation photos, smiling for a change, standing in front of that dreamlike blur of blue and green and sepia.
