by submission | Nov 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Chris McCormick
Drone sat upon the empty dresser. A lithe little bundle of rods, wires and wings atop the last piece of furniture not yet pawned. From here it trained a camera upon another little bundle on a pile of towels on the floor. This warm little bundle had stopped crying now. It swelled and sighed gently at the pace of a baby breathing.
Drone Mazggen Vinzen had logged the cessation of crying and was now observing the heartbeat, and counting the average duration and standard deviation of time between breaths. For about seven minutes and fifty five seconds the baby’s temperature had been climbing. Febrile seizure was increasingly probable.
Drone alighted from the dresser with a gentle whirling thrum, noted the closed door – slammed shut by a human in a hazy drug induced fury – and headed directly for a panel in the ceiling that afforded egress into the roof space above. A gentle test bump before it punched upward into the dark space, switching camera EM envelope wide and amplifing signal as it did so. The ceiling tile flipped away harmlessly with a polystyrene pock. Drone ducked and swooped precisely past beams, pipes, cables, stalling gently above another ceiling tile over the common room of the abode.
It whirred up as high as it could in the space and reconfigured pieces of metal skeleton with a snap, making a rough upside-down teardrop shape. Then all engines reversed and it powered downward. Upon impact the tile bounced but did not break and the drone’s fans reversed again, recovering from the bounce with a wobble. It pulled up for a second crack, and this time the tile gave way and the drone plunged through into the space below amidst a flurry of light, white shards of ceiling tile.
Two humans lay sprawled on beanbags and dirty old towels. About them were strewn cans, food containers, mouldy food, syringes and the other detrius of addiction. Drone hovered for a moment, monitored heart beats, states of consciousness, and then swept down over the unconscious man’s head.
“Excuse me, sir,” vocalized the drone.
No response.
It drifted gently downward and extended a small probing armature to tap on the man’s hairy cheek three times.
No response.
“Excuse me, sir,” again but louder.
Still no response.
This time the drone issued a small electric charge from the probe into the man’s face.
Observing the motion of the man’s fist it began evasive action, but there was not sufficient time to reach full power before impact. It ricocheted off the wall and, noting hostile action, withdrew to the hole in the ceiling, hovering there a few seconds. The man had barely entered consciousness and was now drifting downward again, punching arm limp across his chest. Self assessment showed no real damage from the punch – nothing that couldn’t be tightened back up.
The drone mobilized rapidly through the ceiling space again, and back into the baby’s room from above. Amongst the towels the baby was convulsing and emitting a tiny mewling choking sound. The drone dropped swiftly, bouncing four times in succession next to the child, snatching up the corners of a towel with each bounce and then raising gently upward, strained flying machinery squealing softly as the warm bundle was lifted from the floor.
Shards of glass spun into the air outside as the tiny human-robot package burst through the window into the glorious sunshine. Drone Mazggen Vinzen felt its skin flood with a soft hot rush of photovoltaic energy. It assumed a hard forward trajectory in the direction of the medical facility.
by submission | Nov 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Doug Robbins
His body was made of metal and instead of eyes, he had light sensors that flashed when someone got with in ten feet of him. ”Am I more human than you,” the robot asked his human class.
The human students looked at each other. One student, Todd Hallowell spoke up. ”Maybe?”
The robot shook his head.”Wrong, of course you are more human than I am. You’re people!”
Todd hung his head. ”Oh.”
Why do you suppose the people running this college have created me to instruct you about poetry?”
”It was cheaper than paying a professor?” Elaine Cretchley said.
”Affirmative,” the robot replied.
Elaine smiled, savoring her moment of victory.
”Can I teach you how to feel?”
”Logistically speaking you could,” Carl Perkins shot out.
” Then why do you let my cousins run your lives for you?”
The students exchanged puzzled looks.
”I’m referring to computers, tablets and smart phones.”
”What’s wrong with smart phones?” Paige Sanders asked.
The robot instructor would have sighed if he knew how. ”They have replaced the art of conversation. How many of you have been to parties where everyone has been talking on a cellphone instead of talking to the person next to them?”
”Everyone raised their hands. ”Exactly, you’re all more robotic than I am, I was created and programmed to be a robot; what is you kids’ excuse?”
”It’s just easier to talk to people on phones or via texts,” Henry Brach retorted.
”What if the United states military compensated for their lack of communication skills the way civilians do? What i mean is, if the military took the approach of America’s high school students and college students and refused to work on their communication skills? I was created by scientists. Nothing is special about me and yet you all look at me as though I am some great prophet.”
”You’re no prophet,” Zack Taylor muttered.
”Exactly. I am no prophet. I am your servant but you are my slave. Humans refuse to think, so they let machines think for them”
The room was silent. No one blinked. Periodically, a student or two, would glance up at the clock and sigh. ”By 2020, I predict, all robots will enslave the entire human race,” The robot professor hypothesized.
All the students laughed. ”It’s already begun,” the robot said. The bell rang.
The phone rang and every student pulled out their black berries and smart phones, and meandered, shuffled stiffly toward the closed classroom door.
by submission | Nov 8, 2014 | Story |
Author : CR Briffett
Welcome to Perfect Match. Please sign in through one of your professional or social media networks.
Thank you, we will now gather all of your digital data.
When you are ready to meet a perfect match, simply come down to one of our centres, donate a saliva sample and we’ll take care of the rest.
Jay shut down the monitor of his phone. It rolled back inside the device and he locked it with his little fingerprint.
“Hey, what are you up to?”
Jay looked up to see his housemate, Marc, had wandered into his room.
“I, uh, just signed up to an enhanced matching service.”
“Wow. I didn’t even know you were looking to settle down. I guess I’ll need to find a new housemate soon. When are you going to start the process?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wonder if I shouldn’t just try it the old-fashioned way. Meet someone I like the look of and just see how things go.”
“See how things go? Who does that when they’re looking for a long-term relationship? That approach so clearly didn’t work. If it had there wouldn’t have been such a high divorce rate for generations. These matches are as close to perfection as you’re going to find.”
Jay sighed. “Maybe.”
“Anyway, you approach a woman in a nitecafé or wherever and suggest that, and she will assume that you’re only looking for a fling. No-one gets seriously involved without running a compatibility check first these days. We’re not cavemen.”
“A few people must still chance it.”
“Who has the time to waste? These companies can access everything about you: what you do, where and how you spend your money, where and how you spend your time. They can work out all your key personality traits and then their DNA testing ensures there is chemistry between you and the lady.”
“Sometimes I find it all a bit unsettling.”
“Don’t be a parano. You sound like my grandpa. People protested about their data being used by companies and then they got over it. Or they grew old and died. Whatever. They went quiet.”
“But these programs assume that I want someone who really closely resembles me. Maybe I’d rather someone whose personality complements my own instead.”
“Come on. In the end we all just want to date versions of ourselves. It’s been scientifically proven. What you want is yourself with breasts and a higher voice.”
Jay laughed. “Nice image. But maybe you’re right. I guess I’d better head out to the centre and spit in a tube.”
“If you don’t I might head out and do it under your name. Then some hot girl will be coming over to have great conversations with you, her dream man, and will be surprised to find she is lusting after me.”
“Lusting after you would be a shock to any woman. I’m not sure if that would work but anyway they check your ID when you give the sample.”
“Pity.”
Jay smiled and, saying goodbye, headed out to the clinic.
The metrotrain departed with its usual punctuality and smoothness, and then juddered to a halt. Cries of surprise filled the carriage. The last time public transport had been late it had made the national news.
“Unbelievable,” he said to a pretty brunette next to him.
“It’s rare,” she agreed. “But you know sometimes I like things to be unpredictable.” She smiled at him.
“Me too.”
“Do you ever enjoy just taking a chance and … seeing how things go?”
“Absolutely. My name’s Jay, by the way.”
by submission | Nov 7, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
I knew she was dead when I saw the blood. It floated by me and splattered silently on the console. Everyone else—Yanders, Diorino, and Rector—was dead, too. They were floating at the far side of the cabin, congregated strangely like a bunch of line dancers doing the Conga.
Zero gravity took over when main controls failed. It was a slow process, and they were dead before the gravity failed, so there was no pain for them….just me. I hit the ceiling with the force of a bullet, the Kyllian plasma charge had rocked the ship. I was knocked unconscious; I do not know for how long.
But I awoke to the touch of Kipling’s body hitting me as it passed by. I must have nudged her a little bit while waking, otherwise she wouldn’t have hit the console; she would have hit the other bodies like a linebacker trying to break a defensive line. A stream of blood flowed from her like a crimson vapor trail as she collided with the console, then sprayed blood everywhere.
The view screen was still on. I saw the Kyllian ship, massive and undamaged, looming over us.
Why? I thought.
The answer was too clear, however. Just weeks ago, a survey ship had been destroyed in this quadrant. A rescue ship was sent to investigate, but they found nothing but wreckage and a buoy telling them to stay away. We heeded that warning, but the Kyllians were laying claim to sectors of space quicker than a drunken sailor spends money at a bar.
Our scanners told us of the approaching ship, and we tried to elude them.
They found us before we could escape.
It wasn’t much of a battle. We were a survey ship, not a battlecruiser. The Kyllians opened fire and, now, everyone but me was dead.
I heard the airlock claxon going off.
We were being boarded.
I panicked. I was a stellar cartographer. I mapped stars. I hadn’t signed up for this. We were supposed to be out for a month from Starbase 3, mapping an uncharted region of space.
I could hear the sound of magnetic boots clanking, then pulling free, from the catwalks.
They were getting closer.
There were several of them.
I knew where the weapons were, but there was no chance I could kill them all. I wasn’t a fighter.
So, I did the only thing I could….and I waited.
##
Four Kyllian soldiers entered the control room. I chanced a glance before I closed my eyes. They were huge. Bigger than men. They ambled into the room awkwardly. I could tell that they were looking around, touching things, taking artifacts. Then, I felt motion. Something was pulling us toward it. I cracked my eyes opened just a hair—just enough to see—and I saw the Kyllian’s ugly face regarding us. It was looking at Diorino. It was cutting away a portion of her jumpsuit, revealing her breasts. Maybe it had never seen a human female? It started to turn its head toward me, and I closed my eyes again….but not too tight.
For a long, long moment, nothing happened. Then, it pushed away the clump of dead bodies I had become a part off and walked off.
The Kyllians stayed a few more minutes, then they moved off to another part of the ship.
I did not move or open my eyes for a long, long time.
When I did, it was to the sound of the airlock closing.
The Kyllians were leaving.
I waited a while longer, then detached myself from the bodies. I had intertwined my arms in theirs, effectively meshing us together.
The bodies floated away.
I pushed off and looked at the view screen. The Kyllian ship was receding in the distance.
I watched them leave.
I looked at the bodies.
I cried.
And, when I knew the Kyllians were out of range, I activated the distress signal…and waited.
by submission | Nov 6, 2014 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“This is the day it all ends,” said Brosh.
“Why don’t you take one of the mood stabilizers the doctor prescribed?” asked Querna, Brosh’s wife. She often wondered why she’d married Brosh. If I’d married that engineer who had a crush on me, she thought to herself, I’d probably be enjoying a canal cruise right now.
Brosh ignored Querna’s suggestion and returned to his study. He was and had always been an odd sort of Martian. Even as a child he had thought there was something seriously wrong with the world, something both ineffable and inescapable. His parents had taken him to a string of psychiatrists who had given him various diagnoses and prescriptions. None of them helped. Part of Brosh’s ill-defined neurosis was that whatever was wrong with Mars was somehow related to Earth. As a result, he had devoted himself to the study of the lifeless, desiccated third planet from the Sun. He was Mars’ foremost expert on that world.
Brosh had been working in his study for about a quarter of an hour when he heard Querna yell from the living room.
He rushed in and saw his wife looking at the vid screen in disbelief. On the screen was a live feed from Elysium City. But the video looked strange. Both the people, running about in terror, and the buildings were all translucent.
“…have been unable to explain the phenomenon which started just over half an hour ago,” a newscaster was saying. “Weather stations in Elysium are reporting that barometric pressure is plummeting in the region. Just a moment. We’ve just received a report that radiation levels in Elysium are rising…”
Brosh rushed back to his study and interfaced his terminal with the observatory’s computer. He called up the latest telescopic image of Earth. “It’s…blue!” he said in astonishment. The spectrograph confirmed what he already suspected: The dead desert world of Earth was now mostly covered in water.
“It’s happening in Utopia Planitia now!” Querna screamed from the adjoining room.
Brosh didn’t respond. He just kept watching Earth. He saw something on the crescent of Earth’s nightside. Lights. Dozens, then hundreds. “Cities,” he said aloud. And somehow he knew that paradoxically the cities materializing before his eyes had been there for a very long time.
Somewhere along the line, Brosh thought to himself, a great mistake had been made. By whom or by what, he didn’t know. Mars with its thick atmosphere and butterscotch-colored sky and great canals and oceans and majestic cities piercing the clouds was not supposed to be. Likewise, Earth was never intended to be a barren rock, the subject of science fictional invasions and the target for the space agency’s unmanned probes.
“It’s happening here now!” Querna shrieked.
Brosh felt strangely calm and composed. This isn’t armageddon, he thought. This is a return to normality. He saw that his garden was now bereft of foliage. It looked like a desert. After a moment, he realized he was seeing his garden through his study’s wall, not its window.
“Brosh! We have to get away from here!” Querna was standing next to Brosh but her voice sounded like it came from far away.
Brosh suddenly felt cold. He had trouble breathing. He noticed something in his increasing insubstantial living room. A strange wheeled vehicle. It slowly moved toward him. The machine stopped and began taking a panoramic photograph. About 20 minutes later, the mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California received the image of the arid, sterile vista.
