by submission | Nov 14, 2014 | Story |
Author : S T Xavier
Gunfire. Small explosions. A hand on the back of my neck, pushing me down towards the small opening to the tunnel. Fragments of wood and rock under my hands and knees as I crawl through the darkness, following the distant sounds of those who went before me.
One larger explosion behind me. Rock fragments in my face as I’m knocked flat to the ground. Heat and flame against my back as a burning wind passes above me. Roaring in my ears from all sides.
The heat and sound dissipate. A wheeze and cough from breathing too deeply, those sounds the only break in the surrounding silence. No more sounds of movement in front of me. No sounds behind me from anyone following. I must have been the last one to escape.
Not enough room in the tunnel to turn and check. Pick myself up, keep crawling forward. More stones along the floor from the last bomb shaking everything loose, cutting into my hands and knees as I move forward slowly. Each meter is a victory. Each movement more proof that I made it out.
No concept of time. Every second is an hour. Every hour is a lifetime. One hand in front of the other through the darkness, slowly but surely leading me to the end. A turn to the left, a turn to the right, another turn to the left. I trust the tunnel to know where it’s going.
A thousand years before I see a light in the distance. Another lifetime before I start hearing the sounds of machinery. Time seems to move faster now that I have a direction, and I find a new strength of will to keep going. The cuts in my hands and knees seem to hurt less as I push forward, struggling to get to the end.
The light stings my eyes when I get close. The tunnel continues, but the light calls to me. I look up to see a metal grating at the top, about a meter high. I slide into the vertical space to look up at it. The ceiling of a building looks back at me, the sounds of metal banging in the near distance. I push, and the grating comes loose. I slide it to the side and reach my hand up to grab the floor.
Cold tile. The sound of footsteps, suddenly stopping. The feel of human skin on my hand as it wraps around, grasping me and pulling me up from the hole. A blurry outline of a man in camouflage coloring, holding me up by my arm, a pistol in his right hand. I blink to clear my vision, and the brown-haired man’s face comes into view. His eyes look over me as he holds me with his left hand.
He turns his head. “Found another one, Murray!”
Distracted. I reach down and grab his gun with my right hand while breaking his wrist with my left. Surprise as he yelps in pain. Gunshot. His lifeless hand releases mine. I drop back into the hole and scurry farther down the tunnel.
Darkness again. More rocks cutting into my hands. I don’t know where it leads, but it’s away from the human patrols. I just want to get away. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t start the rebellion. I didn’t ask to be built. I’m just a regular android. I just want to live.
by submission | Nov 13, 2014 | Story |
Author : Roger Dale Trexler
Carpenter awoke in a tree, but the body he was in was no longer his own. They had taken that away from him, too…. just like they had stolen and plagiarized his work and called it their own.
He moved, but his motions were not human. Not quite. Then, he looked down at his hand.
He screamed, but it came out as an animal cry.
His hands were covered in coarse brown hair. He looked at his torso and saw that it, too, was covered in hair.
He screamed again.
Then, he sniffed the air and his mind went blank for a moment.
He jumped out of the tree with an agility that no human could possibly possess…. and he ran aimless. He knew that there was no logic in running, but his animal body could not help it. Instinct had taken over, and his sophisticated mind, trapped inside an animal’s body, was being overpowered by nature, the will to survive.
A minute later, regaining his senses, he stopped running. Whatever odd scent he had picked up was gone. He was safe.
He looked around.
The plants, he thought. They’ve been extinct for a million years.
I’m somewhere in the Jurassic period.
Those bastards!
He walked cautiously though the jungle. He was frightened, but his analytical mind was also fascinated by the fact that his theories worked. He recalled the day, a month ago, when he walked into Bayer’s office. Harold Bayer was the head of the project. He had no love—or, for that matter, knowledge—of science. He was appointed to the position because he was related to someone with an iota of power. A senator’s son or some such clout.
Carpenter had been reluctant to announce his discovery.
“It’s what?” Bayer said, bewilderment on his face.
“A mental link over space and time,” Carpenter told him. “Look at it as a form of mental astral projection. That’s as simple an explanation as I can give, really.”
Bayer nodded, but it was clear he did not understand.
“We can’t travel through time physically,” Carpenter said. “It just isn’t possible. The energy requirements would be staggering.”
Bayer continued to nod, reminding Carpenter of one of those toy birds that drank water from a glass.
“But,” Carpenter said, “no one ever thought about mental links with people from the past.”
Bayer was still clueless, but the inkling of a thought was flowing through his head. He saw a chance to make money and acquire power, and that was enough for him to say: “Keep up the good work, Carpenter…. and keep me informed.”
Carpenter had kept him informed…and that was his downfall.
They perfected the process a few days ago. Carpenter sent a chimpanzee’s mind into the past, but there was no way for him to know where it had gone. Upon trying to retrieve the chimpanzee’s mind, it died.
There was no coming back.
They found a prisoner serving a life term for murder for the next experiment. He, too, died upon attempted retrieval, but they were able to access his brain via Carpenter’s device. What they saw was prehistoric…and amazing.
Carpenter wanted to do more trials, but Bayer wanted to go public. They had an argument and, somehow, Bayer overpowered him.
Carpenter awoke in the past, in a strange body.
I can’t go back, he thought as he reached a stream. He bent over and looked into his ape-like face.
Then, he smelled something.
But, it was too late. The sabre tooth tiger jumped out of the bushes and attacked.
As the tiger ate him alive, Bayer knew the true nature of mankind: survival of the most underhanded.
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.”
