by submission | Aug 28, 2015 | Story |
Author : Jacqueline Bridges
SWF seeking SM, 40-50, human or android. Looks not important.
The blinking type flooded John’s inbox. Delete, delete, del—he paused on the last: Android adoption today, new shipment, Middleton Square.
The Organization of GoodWill toward Men, Women, Children, and Android caught him as he slipped in.
“Have you considered adopting an Android, sir?”
John stopped, paying no attention to the aid, his eyes on the reader board above them. Android Adoption: Save a droid. Two models set for recycle.
The aid talked on, “We have many in need of a home. They’re very good companions, and still useful. No more shoveling snow.”
John cleared his throat, “I’m looking for a girl.”
“Yes, yes,” the aid’s voice rose with animation, “we have a number of females today. Many—“
“Seven.” John’s eyes went to the manifest list, “I’m looking for a seven-year-old.”
The aid recovered, “They’re often older, not the norm.” He referenced his list, keeping it from John’s view. “Oh.” He shrugged. “We do. She came in this morning…”
It was all he needed to hear. John stormed the registration table, fumbling for something to charge his account with. “Number 72108,” he spouted, “I’d like to make an order.”
The woman at the desk verified his registration. “Yes. You are clear to make an order.”
“I’d like the seven-year-old girl.”
The woman frowned at her keyboard, “Let me see what we have in inventory. A young girl–”
“She’s in there.” John tapped the table with his writing instrument, engraved with the GoodWill’s unification logo. “Came in this morning.”
“Ah yes,” the woman smiled. “Straight from Japan. Retrieved from the docks this morning.”
“Yes.” John grumbled. “Where do I sign?”
The woman nearly laughed, “It’ll take a while to process the paperwork and register the droid. And then there’s programming.”
His eyes dropped.
The woman twisted her lips, reading John’s disappointment, “Maybe we can speed this up.”
John’s urgency returned with the start of a smile.
The woman’s smile was more playful, “Let’s start with your registration.”
John pushed the buttons, signed the documents, and answered all the questions for programming.
“Alright then,” the lady clicked her tablet once more. “Your droid will update tonight at midnight. We’ve gone ahead and programmed her with the name you’ve chosen for now, Anne—?”
“Anne—a—See—a.”
“Yes,” the woman fluttered her eyebrows, “a very pretty name.”
“Her mother chose it,” he said, “named after her grandmother.”
“Ah,” the woman cooed. “Yes, very nice.” She was used to this sort of thing, humans naming Androids. “Well, she’s all yours.” The woman motioned for someone behind her, “William, please take droid E0067 around for pick up.”
She turned back to John, “Here’s your slip—just follow the signs for delivery. William will meet you in back.” When John hesitated, she motioned to the crowd of protestors behind him, “It’s better this way.”
John grabbed the pink ticket from the woman and hustled to his car. He didn’t bother with a thank you or a pardon.
By the time he reached the loading area, his hands were moist, sticky with sweat. He gave himself a once over in the mirror, smoothing his gray hair in place, checking for food between his teeth, and for his final preparation he tried on a fatherly smile.
The girl was small, skinny, with hair lighter than he liked, but close enough. He held out his hand for hers and she slipped her small fingers in his,
“Hello father,” she said.
“Hello my dear Annacia. I’ve missed you.”
by submission | Aug 27, 2015 | Story |
Author : Patrick Hueller
The footage is grainy, and getting grainier with each viewing. But Peter Nevins doesn’t notice. To him, what’s on screen is crystal clear. The TV isn’t flickering; the colors aren’t blurry.
There the soccer field is, looking just as it did exactly thirty-seven years ago. The grass remains as green as ever, as chewed up from two weeks of competition.
There the other players are, frantic, scrambling, converging.
There the clock is—not technically on the screen—it was extra time, and they didn’t put extra time on the TV back in the ’80s—but it’s ticking away in his head just the same: “9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . .”
There the goalie is, striding, slipping.
And there Peter’s younger self is, among the other players but slightly ahead of them, surprised to find the ball at his feet, the net unoccupied.
“Calm down,” Peter tells his younger self. “You have time.”
But his younger self doesn’t listen.
He rushes the shot. A wide open net, but he sends the ball high and wide.
There’s the sound of the other shot, the other kind of shot, and there’s Peter crumpling onto the field.
There’s the blood, blooming on his jersey.
He was lucky, everyone had said.
An inch or two to his right, they said, and bye bye heart.
They’d called the shooter a fanatic, a lunatic, a soccer-watching sociopath.
And in his head, Peter has always known they were right. He should forget about that guy, just as they advised him. Forget about the whole day.
One bad day doesn’t define a person, they’d said—let alone one bad moment.
In his head he knew they were absolutely, unequivocally right.
As for his almost-bullet-ridden heart, though . . . well, it won’t let him forget.
For thirty-seven years, he and his heart have spent the anniversary of that day pleading with the footage.
Relax, they’ve implored his younger self. Slow down.
You have plenty of time, they’ve insisted. The net’s wide open.
Go in, they’ve begged the ball. Please. This time please go in.
That’s what he’s doing now. Pleading. Supplicating. He’s on his knees, straining his eyes at the TV, beseeching the ball to find the net.
But it won’t.
No matter how many times he rewinds and re-watches, no matter how many years pass, the tape shows the same missed shots. One misses the net; the other misses his heart.
The same thing, over and over.
And yet he keeps going. Keeps rewinding. Keeps re-watching.
Again and again.
Each time, he’s sure the next viewing will be different.
After all, he’s done it before: thirty-seven years ago to the day, he wished for something so strenuously that he made it happen.
He wished to die.
As he watched the ball soar into the stands, he told himself that his life might as well be over, that someone might as well end it right there and then.
And, okay, this desire didn’t exactly come true, but it was pretty close. One or two inches, to be exact.
So maybe, just maybe, he can once again alter the course of events through the sheer force of his will.
He rewinds, re-watches.
Repeats.
Repeats again.
He watches the ball leave his younger self’s foot and he entreats the forces that be for a different outcome.
Please. Please. PLEASE.
And it works.
Finally.
After thirty-seven years and thousands upon thousands of viewings, the forces that be actually cooperate.
Instead of soaring, the ball merely rolls.
Slowly.
Honestly, Peter can’t believe how long it’s taking for the ball to cross the goal line.
Long enough for him to realize that he’s no longer a young man. He’s standing there, on the field—he’s somehow been transported from his living room back to this stadium—but he hasn’t regained any of his former leg strength. He’s still an old man, stiff and arthritic.
Which explains why the ball is rolling so slowly.
And why it comes to a rest right in front of the goal line.
He watches in horror as the goalie scrambles to his feet and scoops the ball up before Peter’s teammates can get to it.
He hears the referees’ end-of-game whistles.
And he shuffles, just in time, one or two inches to his right.
by submission | Aug 26, 2015 | Story |
Author : Ken McGrath
My mother often said that before I learned to walk I ran.
I ran everywhere; probably why I wasn’t so quick at learning to read. I couldn’t sit still for very long, didn’t like having my feet parked beneath a desk you see. I’d an abundance of energy, that’s why I was always darting around the place, chasing everything from footballs to girls. Heck I even chased the odd dream.
And I caught a few too, like the one thing that got me through school. Relay races, the sprint, hurdles. I did it all, although I wasn’t so good at that last one. Seems I never was great at overcoming obstacles. The one minute mile however, that was what stole my heart. A stretch of open track, pure focus and immediate results. Sheer beauty.
When I went from my teens into my twenties I kept upping the distance, ticking off boxes. 10k, 20k. Even the big one a few times.
Then when I was 29 I ran into Bernadette Walters. Beautiful, slender, ambitious Bernadette Walters who had lips that would set you weak at the knees and a shard of ice for a heart. But I found that out much too late, because after we married I ran into a wall. Work, bills, the mortgage on a tiny apartment that went too quickly from bijou to coffin-box. It was too much. I ran myself into the ground.
The pounds began to slide on and, for the first time, life ran away from me. Yet somehow in the midst of it all we conceived and along came my little Suzie, my precious girl. And for a while she brightened everything up, but it didn’t last. We quickly fell back on old habits, staying together just for our little girl.
When Suzie was three I started to run again. Tentative steps in the park at night. Some men might have cheated on their wives but I did the only thing I knew how, I put one foot in front of the other and built up laps. Every night, always coming back to the same place no matter how fast or how far I ran, life had become a circuit of cold stares and bitter, poisonous words.
We were out on Christmas Eve pretending to be a real family when the first attack came. The blast dropped from the heavens like God screaming and tore the shopping centre we were walking towards into pieces. I grabbed Suzie, turned and ran. There were screams but I didn’t look back. I just kept going. I had to make sure my girl was safe.
Weeks have passed now. The snow is melting and buds are appearing on some of the trees. From talking to other survivors I’ve learned of the hundreds of simultaneous attacks around the world. They say those first blasts were an extermination front-wave, firing pulse after pulse and reducing our cities to rubble, disrupting humanity for the coming alien invasion.
They say there’s a Resistance coming together but I don’t want to be part of it. All I do is run. I have my girl and I teach her to run too.
So long as I have legs beneath me I’ll continue to do run. It’s all I’ve known since I was born. If my daughter is to survive she’s going to have to learn to run too and maybe then I’ll have done something good with my life.
by submission | Aug 25, 2015 | Story |
Author : Kraigher Lutz
They had first found it, there at the highway split. They had seen its design in the leaves and grass. The design spiraled out, burning the soil.
We had worked quick trying to contain it; cranes high overhead, holding harshly shining spotlights. Trenches were dug and cinder-block walls were built; clear plastic sheeting covered it, but the loose pieces of the vapor-lock blew in the breeze, spiraling upon itself and unfurling in the design.
They had tried to dig it all out, but it was still there; dry dirt crumbling out of the tines of the backhoe, falling, curling and twisting the design in the breeze.
At the lab, they tried to contain it. Locked away in Petri dishes, its design crawled through the agar.
It was then that we first started hearing it. A soft and melodious symphony of pulses and beats, flowing into each other and bouncing off of another; like a tribal rendition of Morse Code.
It was quiet at first, like an afterthought of white noise. Then it started to incorporate into everyday noises, the pop of the toaster, car horns, children’s songs at recess. It became all-encompassing and fully integrated into everyday life.
After forty-two years, there wasn’t hardly anyone alive who could remember a time before it; without it. Those who were older simply could not remember. Large chunks of memories spontaneously vanished.
But we are pattern seeking animals. Slowly but surely, the pieces were coming back together.
by submission | Aug 23, 2015 | Story |
Author : Soo Kim
I had been taken.
Her hands clutched the bar across her lap, as the seat swung to some soundless melody. It hovered expectantly, like the next carriage of the ghost train at a macabre amusement park, waiting to lurch forward, through the chill, silent night.
Wrists aching from the bandages, ragged now where they hid the razor’s kiss. She turned to look at him, white beside her. Only his long hair moved, like sinewy gossamer waving slowly. She dared not breathe.
The chasm opened in front of them; a gaping toothless maw. At last with a jerk the seat propelled forward, and they entered the dark, ducking and weaving through the naked girders of the cavern’s supporting structure. The deepening black, spread beneath, like an oil slick, thick and sticky on their eyelids.
There was presence here. She could see the red blinks of tiring LEDs, that caught reflections off metallic bodies strewn like straw, limp over twisted mounds of junk. The fug of abandon twitched at her nostrils. It took hold of her, the still broken lives of the machines.
She knew that they were waiting, watching ready to rise up and take her; to strip her and change her into what they were. Empty broken things. She clutched the talktalk to her chest, afraid it would betray her, its pulsing light and vibration would be enough to wake those frozen limbs into clutching hands and desperate, wailing voices. The seat carrying them forward slowed. A raised service platform of punched steel plate appeared, dimly lit above the mechanical graveyard they were travelling through. She thought that it looked like a stage awaiting some kind of monstrous freakish act.
They stood, together on the platform, an island, surrounded by an ocean of malware. A still obidient audience, waiting the final performance. He turned. Behind her there was a flicker of movement in the dark; a strange grinding squeak as if from a rusted clockwork mouse. He pushed roughly. She fell towards the sound, tumbling to the feet of figure tainted with the glimmer of metal emerging from the dark.
Tall, breasts firm and high, her once golden skin tarnished with age and streaked with oil and grime. But she was still whole and strong. Her face hidden, hunched. The slow mechanical squeak was coming from her turning hand like a sour organ grinder. She straightened, the wrenching caught and her face exposed. The frayed jumble of optic fibres finished in empty sockets and her nose a collapsed bridge falling into a deep ragged hole from the middle of her head down to where her mouth had been. Her hand still clutched the arm of the mangle where what had been the remnants of her hair was caught between the massive rollers, her head mottled with broken stubble twisted chunks bleeding black from the roots, down the eyeless sockets, dribbling down her neck.
And she knew it was HER and that HE had brought her here and SHE was to be her tool. She heard a voice, still strong and deep and she felt the desire and the will of HER voice – what would it take to make me beautiful again…
