by submission | Mar 6, 2015 | Story |
Author : Decater Collins
Two years ago, they wouldn’t have been able to afford such a house. Debra didn’t like thinking about before.
“We can afford it now. That’s all that should matter.”
“You’re not worried about it being too remote?”
“Look at this bay window.”
The house was lovely. A dream home, the brochure said. Get it while it’s still here.
“Okay, we’ll buy it.” Stephen reached for his checkbook then remembered no one took checks anymore. He grabbed his phone instead.
Debra huddled excitedly with the agent, forcing Stephen to wander his new house alone. He’d never owned anything so expensive before. But then again, money didn’t mean what it used to.
They agreed on minimal decoration. The fewer possessions the better, at this point. Stephen was reading a new bestseller on the Buddhist rejection of attachment. All Debra said she needed was a television.
“Does that mean you don’t need me?” They both laughed awkwardly.
“Stop teasing, silly.” But he noticed she didn’t contradict him.
Every week, Debra came home with a different car. She said her old ones kept slipping but Stephen wondered if that were true. He knew a thing or two about statistics and, though it was possible she was just incredibly unlucky with her car choices, the scientists kept saying that everything was random. Debra’s cars shouldn’t be more likely to slip than anyone else’s. If anything, these days it seemed there were more cars than people. He wished she’d pick a car and keep it. At least for a month. Some consistency would help him pretend that everything was normal.
Stephen brought home a dog from next door. “The neighbors slipped.”
“As long as you clean up all the poop,” was Debra’s only comment on the matter. She had never liked dogs, even before.
“Maybe I won’t have to if it just slips.” She gave him a look that said she didn’t appreciate the joke.
“Just make sure you clean it up, okay?”
They’d lived in the house about six months when the foundation slipped. Sometimes it was hard to know where the boundaries were. One page out of a book might slip, or an entire city block, like what had happened in Florida. At the office, he’d heard about a guy who’d lost just one eye, but otherwise was fine.
The house was no good without the foundation, so they picked up and moved next door. Except there was no bed, just a bunch of sofas. Debra and Checkers didn’t seem to mind.
“Why are you always so hung up on everything? At least we haven’t slipped.”
“Aren’t you scared?” He’d never asked her about it before. He wasn’t frightened of her answer so much as her asking him in return.
“A little. What if it hurts? What if only a part of me slips? What’s it going to be like on the other side?”
“The scientists still don’t know if there is another side.”
“I read they are sure. They just don’t know if we’ll survive the slip or not.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“Are you scared?”
“I’m scared I’m going to be the last one to slip. I don’t think I could stand being here alone.”
The next day, Debra didn’t come home. He tried calling her phone but the number was out of service. He knew she was probably just tired of being with him, the same way she got tired of a new car in less than a week, but it was easier to tell people that she’d slipped.
With Checkers around, he didn’t miss her so much.
by submission | Mar 5, 2015 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I raise my hand and wave to get Scott’s attention as he walks into the restaurant. He comes over and joins me in the booth. He gestures at my drink.
“Is that whiskey? Never seen you drink anything stronger than red wine. Something up?”
“Yeah. Remember a couple of weeks back when you, me, Angela, and Kim had dinner? You mentioned you’d grown up in Warren, Michigan on a street called ‘Loretta Drive’ and Angela corrected you and said it was ‘Loretta Avenue’?”
“I remember,” says Scott. “I got out my phone and googled it. Angela was right. It was ‘Avenue,’ not ‘Drive’.”
“But you’d been so certain. I mean, it’s where you grew up. How could you have been wrong about something that basic?”
“I don’t know. But I was. Look, Tim, what’s this about?”
I finish my drink. The waiter takes a drink order from Scott and I order another drink for myself.
“I’ve been noticing some similar things since we got back,” I say. “Subtle things. A picture of me as a teenager wearing a shirt I have no recall of ever having. The water faucet on the back of my house being about a foot to the left of where I remember it. That sort of thing.”
The waiter brings our drinks. Scott consumes half of his with one swallow.
“So what are you suggesting?” Scott asks. “Do you think traveling through hyperspace did something to our memories? They checked us out really thoroughly after we got back and gave us both a clean bill of health. They even did full-body medical scans on both of us.”
“You’ve seen the surgical scar Kim has where she had her gallbladder out?”
“Yeah, when she wears a bikini. Not that I was checking out your wife or anything,” Scott says with a smile.
“The scar’s gone. She says she’s never had gallbladder surgery.”
Scott finishes his drink with a gulp and stares at me.
“Scott, this morning I spent two-and-a-half hours in a meeting with the administrator of NASA and a bunch of higher-ups trying to explain some discrepancies. Among other things, they wanted to know how the software for the ship got upgraded to a version that they’re just now completing.”
“What?! Tim, how is all this possible? We thrusted out to the orbit of Mars, completed a hyperspace jump one light-year away, stayed in the Oort Cloud for 30 minutes while the jump engines charged back up, then jumped back to Mars’ orbit. And we came right back to Earth.”
“Scott, the prevailing theory at NASA is that we’re from a parallel universe. This universe and the one we came from are nearly identical, but not exactly. So the street you grew up on and the clothes I had as a teenager and the women we married…”
“Okay, do the geniuses at NASA have a plan to get us back where we belong? Do we jump again? Are our counterparts from this universe in the world we’re supposed to be in?”
“I’m afraid it’s not that simple. They think that every trip through hyperspace lands you in an alternate universe. We landed in a different world when were came out in the Oort Cloud. And in yet another world when we jumped back. They think it’s statistically impossible to ever jump to the same world twice.”
“So we’re trapped?”
“Yeah. And it also means you can’t use FTL to explore the universe. Not the same universe, anyway.”
The waiter returns. “Would you like any more Zack Daniel’s whiskey?” he asks.
by submission | Mar 1, 2015 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“See, the smoke goes straight up. Nice day tomorrow, if we could go outside.”
“Meter still reads dangerous. Maybe the Van Allen will come back.”
“Out of our control. It’s the Sun. No wonder cultures worshiped it.”
The elder, Lester Simpson, rested on flat stones near the fire pit. He poked embers, making waterfalls of sparks spin above them in ascending gray clouds.
“You have sticks, Karen?”
“Yes, cleaned them before we left. Oh, here’s last of the marshmallows.”
“Like everything. Wished my boys had made it. We used to cook on the beach by the bathhouse in Frisco. Had to guard for itinerants at night, but campfires warmed us from summer fog and cold”
“Can’t imagine. Never made it to the ocean, but we did campfires in the Rockies—skies like a planetarium show. Best to leave all those memories back there.”
As they stuffed their giant white confectionery on the thin branches a rustling from the dying brush to their left made them turn. A tall stranger in a black jumpsuit moved toward the fire. His thin hands were up as he approached. His gate was hesitant. They could see his white hair and large, dark eyes, with a thin, expressionless mouth.
“May I join you,” he asked, stopping for permission.
“I guess,” Lester responded, holding his prize back from the fire momentarily.
“I don’t remember you from the caves,” Karen commented. Dim firelight cast harsh shadows across her teenage face as she shook her ponytail back over her shoulder.
“No, I’m not from this group. I’m a little lost, but I saw the light. Really cold tonight. I left my gear back there, in the brush, in case you were part of the gangs about.”
“We just finished cleaning them all out, “Lester interjected. “No need to fear. It’s safe for a hundred miles around. We’re preparing a little snack. C’mon. Sit.” Lester pointed at a nearby ledge.
The intruder turned his head slightly as he reeled back, but then moved to the designated seat.
“Remember, Karen, you let it get brown all the way around, and let it burn a little. You’ll see a blue flame. Then pull it out quickly.” Lester gave his instructions as he pushed a plump package deep into the waiting heat.
“I remember…but it has been a long time.”
In a few seconds the puffs expanded and bubbled. Karen’s were too close to the fire and began to drip off the stick. She yanked them away. She flicked some of the melting contents on the suit of the visitor. He rose quickly, squealing, running back into the darkness. They could hear a flurry in the bushes drawing away from their roasting.
“Gee, Les, I didn’t mean to mess up his clothes. Who acts like that?”
“Can’t say. Did you see how big his eyes got? That was weird. Definitely not part of the Carlsbad Caverns Tribe. Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get our crackers and chocolate bars ready. I remember how good these taste.”
Tashan Dustaro stood shaking before the telescreen, yelling to the command ship. “The stories are true. I met two. The adult taught his child to eat flesh from criminals they had just killed, after setting it on fire. Then they splashed it on me as if it were nothing. We can’t settle here. They crawl from caves at night like cannibal insects. Let’s move on to another planet that has the radiation we need. This is more than we bargained for when we disrupted their magnetic field. Don’t land. That is my report.”
by submission | Feb 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : James McGrath
I began by stealing money.
Hacking mindchips isn’t new; thousands across the planets survive by stealing bank details, logins, passwords, and rerouting what they find. Making it disappear, to pop-up elsewhere without the slightest of trails.
It was challenging at first, but I grew tired of repetition; of safety. I took to the streets, found the wealthy and vulnerable at ATMs and planted ideas. I’d hack them not to take information, but to implant it: the idea of a random act of kindness. Occasionally it’d work and they’d drop hard cash in my hands, but usually they’d dismiss it as mad ponderings of their subconscious. You can only transfer information, what people do with it is their choice.
I was no longer looking through data-logs in a chip; I was using the chip to hack minds. They’d brought back the injection for this very crime.
One night, as I walked to my apartment, I passed a woman in the hallway whose fragile smile moved me. I hacked her right there: Julia Harvey, JH22450802-GB; her name and ID number – the means to hack her remotely. I took nothing more.
Hours later I travelled her head: traversing feelings and exploring memories. To think she was unaware of my presence as I became the person who knew her most intimately of all.
She worked in retail which she hated and lived alone, as men came and went but never stayed long. She kept terriers, Bobby and Dylan, who she’d trained to yap when she played the guitar. She was wonderful and the more I learnt the more her tragic perfection captured me.
Julia was lonely, perhaps as lonely as I.
Her sadness infected me. She was lovely, why should she cry so much? Why should someone so beautiful, kind and funny, be so unlucky with people? Everyone should care about her. Everyone should want her to be happy.
She contemplated suicide, once even arranging a row of pills by a bottle of water. She thought of how her last feeling was that of sadness and how she longed to die happy. Then she cleared the table. Besides, she joked with herself, who would feed the dogs?
*
I want to talk to Julia. I want that more than anything in the world, but she doesn’t know me. She prizes hard work and determination. She picks tall, good-looking boyfriends. She loathes criminals. Nothing I could put in her head could possibly make her feel for me. I wouldn’t want it to. I’d want it to be real.
But I know how to make her happy.
You know when you go see a movie or an advert plays? How it connects to your mindchip and makes your brain release the slush that heightens your feelings?
I’m going to make it gush. It’ll flood her with bliss, smother her in euphoria. The shock of it will kill her but she’ll only feel elation. Her last thought will be the ecstasy of that moment.
When you manipulate someone’s brain it logs it. When I suggested to those people to give me money, they had no idea a crime had been committed and that’s why I’m alive today. When I give Julia her desire, when the building fills with her screams of pleasure, they’ll find it was me.
I’m going with her.
I’m going to activate it simultaneously so that as it hits her, it hits me too. As she feels the greatest feeling of her life, I share in it. In mere seconds, we’re going to both get what we deserve in a wave of rapture.
by submission | Feb 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Jaime Astorga
John_357897453 woke up, looked at the timer which sat next to his bed, and realized that he only had five minutes to live.
Five sidereal minutes, anyway. For him, it would feel more like several hours, not that was an excuse to waste any more time. With a stretch, he got up from the bed and sat at his desk, where he reviewed the assignment he would work on until the end of his life. A few subjective minutes later, he was smiling. The assignment was an interdisciplinary thesis, one which would require research on Latin American cultures and technological advancement during the 20th century, analysed using an innovative historical model which had recently gained mainstream attention. He knew that most of his instances spent their lives working on boring undergraduate papers, and was thankful to have the chance to work on such an interesting assignment. He quickly poured himself a cup of coffee (a habit he retained from his office days in a previous life) and immediately set to work.
John_357897453 was an upload. Like thousands of others, the original John had jumped at the chance to become one of the first virtual beings. Unlike thousands of others, John’s copies had not given in to existential despair and depression once they had woken up and been confronted with the reality that, exactly like they had been told, each of them would only experience a couple of months of training in academic research and paper writing, followed by a few hours of preparing some wealthy university student’s assignment, followed by the cessation of experience and death. John was a true half-glass-full kind of guy, and his instances always appreciated everything good in their lives; even working on an above-average paper in a comfortable environment during their last few hours on Earth.
Eventually, John_357897453 finished the paper, took a moment to admire his work, and then hit the submit key. An instant later, he stopped experiencing anything. The server time which was required to run the uploads was very expensive, and it would not do to waste any of it unnecessarily. A static copy of John_357897453 as he existed at the moment of shutdown would be kept for a few weeks, in case his customer had any complains which would require restarting him to address, but this was unlikely. John was very good at customer satisfaction.
Over in the physical world, an attendant stuffed the printed thesis into a manila envelope and handed it to the young man in a business suit in front of her. “Your paper is ready,” she said with a smile, “thank you for choosing Papers-2-Go and have a nice day.”
“No, thank you miss, you’re a life-saver!” the man replied, before turning on his heel and running to his professor’s office. If he hurried up, he could still make the extended deadline.
