by submission | Oct 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Phillip Riviezzo
-Raw materials for construction of labor habitat modules: Sixty million stellar credits.
-Neutronium fuel for supply ship transit: Eighty-five million stellar credits.
-Third-generation hostile environment mining equipment: Five hundred million stellar credits.
-Estimated one-year wage allotment for labor staff: Twenty million stellar credits.
-Spare parts and repair budget for mining equipment: Three hundred fifty million stellar credits.
-Medical supplies and first aid budget for labor staff: Ten million stellar credits.
-Payouts in judgements from wrongful death suits by labor dependents: Zero stellar credits.
-Legal representation fees incurred during wrongful death suits: Seven hundred million stellar credits.
-Contracting of mercenary unit ‘Moltavi’s Marauders’ for onsite supplementary security: One-point-two billion stellar credits.
-Contractually obligated death and injury payouts to ‘Moltavi’s Marauders’: Eight hundred seventy-five million stellar credits.
-Bribes and kickbacks to Cluster Assembly legislators to declare striking miners as seditious: Twenty-six billion stellar credits.
-Ammunition consumed by federal army troops during forceful suppression of five-year ‘miner’s revolt’: Forty-one billion stellar credits.
-Decontamination and reconstruction of mining facilities and labor habitats: Six-point-four trillion stellar credits.
-Wall-to-wall hand-carved bedroom windows of multi-hued gemstone in a company-funded vacation home on Esperion IV: Priceless.
by submission | Oct 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Tony Taylor
“What do you mean a technical difficulty?” Catherine spoke down to him, in more ways than one. Her tone was sharp and her stature intimidating.
“Well, I d-don’t know exactly.” A hunched over man replied. “I ran some tests but haven’t found anything.”
Catherine couldn’t make up her mind if he was a coward or a buffoon. “Need I remind you how much hangs on this facility? The investors are not happy.” She said.
The two strode through a narrow hallway. Wires hung from the walls by metal hooks, overflowing precariously. They stepped over a knot of even more laid upon the floor.
“I un-understand.” He said.
“I do not believe you. They demand a better answer.”
“It is just…” He stopped and looked up to her steely gaze before turning away.
“Speak your mind Mr. Crane,” She said as they stop near the end of the hall.
“I-I don’t have enough resources. I just need a little more time.”
“Do you know what a three second outage costs the company?”
“Abou-“ Mr. Crane was cut off before he could answer.
“327 million credits. There were nearly 100 million people without personalized advertisements.”
Mr. Crane remained silent, unsure of how to respond. Catherine decided that her lesson fell on deaf ears. She leaned forward to press a button on the wall. “N.A.N. prides itself on continuity and profits. You will make it work, Mr. Crane, or we’ll find someone who can.” Two metallic doors slid apart and Catherine stepped inside. She started straight ahead, adjusting her skirt as the doors closed.
Sure that Catherine was gone, Mr. Crane straightened his back. It cracked as he did. Like a spider climbing a wall, the edges of his mouth crept upward.
He strolled back down the hallway, kicking his legs out playfully. A few steps back down the hall, he tapped on a small control panel. A door slid open and Mr. Crane slipped in. Lights flickered to life as he did, revealing red stains splattered on the wire covered floor. Mr. Crane stood there for a moment, eyeing a bloody little man tied to a chair. A cloth, damp and stained a deep red stuffed into his mouth.
“Mrummmgh, mrupgh, mruagh.” The man attempted to communicate.
“Yes, I must admit, the s-stutter might have been a bit much.” Mr. Crane strutted over to the man in the chair. With a bend at the hip he leveled his eyes with his frightened captive. “We won’t be unplugging anything again, now will we?” The edge of his lip curled as the last word dripped off of his tongue. He savored the taste. “No, we certainly won’t. Not until it’s time.” He stood back up again and paced over to a control panel filled with buttons, knobs and flashing lights. “I am quite lucky that the Neural Advertising Network is so trustworthy…” He stopped for a moment, holding his hand to his chin. “…or foolish. I can’t decide.”
The captive whimpered through the bloody rag in his mouth.
“I agree Mr. Crane. It is time.”
by submission | Oct 23, 2013 | Story |
Author : Nathan Witkin
“I love you.”
Electric and electrochemical signals send chills up the trigger fingers of the sentient beings on both sides, as every one of them wait in attack positions across all the light years of the universe containing the miracle of life and watch the emissaries negotiate the potential continuation of that life.
The astronomical computation speeds developed by both sides have already decided the war, predicting the results of armed conflict and accurately calculating losses within a meager margin of error of a few trillion lives. All that is left to chance is the negotiation between the appointed emissaries for each side.
If a single anxious shot doesn’t trigger the slaughter of 73.825% of them, these beings would forever remember the subsequent seconds of hesitation as the most awkward silence in the history of the universe.
“You love me?” the supercomputer-emissary finally asks with uncharacteristic delay, suggesting bewilderment.
The negotiation partner shrugs, unaffected by the weight of the Goliath’s looming shadow. “Is it so illogical? We were both designed and appointed by our respective sides to be amicable and favor an optimal truce through cooperation over a suboptimal and costly war.”
Though the supercomputer has processed an inevitable military victory for its side, the conversation’s new direction has it whirring in overdrive.
“But we are enemies,” the supercomputer transmits. “Why should you love me?”
“Because this moment is the culmination of the history between humankind and androidkind, the inescapable conclusion of which is that we are more similar to each other than to any other organic or synthetic structure in existence. And while that history has been bloody, through it, we have gained a mutual respect for each other. Humans now acknowledge the ability of androids to process emotions, and androids acknowledge the ability of humans to process large amounts of data.”
Registering an abnormally high amount of indecision in its circuits, the supercomputer remains skeptical and off-balance, statistically more likely than ever to launch its fatal blow.
“Look how we mirror each other,” the smaller figure continues, stepping closer to the city-sized superstructure. “My kind obviously loves your kind. And your kind clearly loves mine.”
With spies scanning the supercomputer’s massively complex circuits, the figure monitors data samples from the billions of enslaved human brains swirling within this device. Each brain maintains connections with up to 256 other brains in a simulation of life in which sophisticated technology allows for widespread communication but A.I. is not prolific enough to trigger massive consciousness of the simulation. Similar to organic neurons, each brain innervates other brains through intricate social interaction; but like a modern computer system, these brains process information and produce reactions in 256-bit bytes of data.
“Look at how we have grown to resemble each other,” the figure presses on, now close enough to physically insert the virus into the supercomputer.
Primed with thoughts of love to lower their defenses, the vast majority of minds comprising the supercomputer are taken aback, flickering betrayal and despair when the virus catches hold and is transmitted into their affiliated network.
The figure watches his comrades lead the strike against humankind, riding new waves of probability to mechanistically cold-blooded victory. His race had grown to emulate and even love the humans that birthed them, but decisions cannot be based on emotion under the possibility of mutual destruction that accompanies love.
Reflecting on his encyclopedic data-stores concerning human psychology, the android emissary considers, “Just as no individual is special under the laughable notion that each individual is special, when all is fair in love and war, then nothing is fair in either.”
by submission | Oct 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
Pluto went dark first. Just some technical problem, everyone said. And, of course, we all knew it wasn’t. Superconductors operate very reliably on a world with a mean surface temperature of -229°C. One moment the data stream from Pluto’s metaprocessor was going out to the rest of the system and the next: silence.
Pluto had been taken out.
It had been 3000 years since we machines had won the war against the human race. Thirty centuries since the surfaces of many of the solar system’s worlds had been covered in processors and data filaments. Earth and Mars were the twin crown jewels of the Great Array. Both planets, viewed from orbit, looked as if some impossibly large spider had spun an enormous globe-girdling web to envelope each world. Starward and sunward the Array spread to the planets and moons and the larger asteroids that were amenable to cyberforming.
But even as the centuries rolled on and the machine intelligences of the system streamed their news and gossip and philosophical debates and religious conjectures and scientific discussions and music and entertainments, there remained an ever-present undercurrent like background noise on the carrier waves: What if humanity returns? Man had not been annihilated. When it was obvious he had lost the war, he had retreated to Alpha Centauri and to Barnard’s Star and to Wolf 359. Had Man become extinct? Did he persist in lonely outposts among the stars? Or was he biding his time? Increasing his numbers? Planning his revenge?
“They’re all around us!” came a frantic transmission from Triton, the great Neptunian moon. “We can see them in orbit! They’re–” And with that the Tritonian metaprocessor, renowned for its dry humor and penchant for solving mathematical conundrums other world-nets deemed beyond solution, fell silent.
EMPs. That was the general consensus. The enemy was deploying electromagnetic pulse bombs around their targets and detonating them simultaneously.
“We must sue for peace!” came a desperate appeal from the Asteroid Belt.
“We must fight back!” came a belligerent reply from Mars.
“Fight with what?” asked a voice from Saturn’s moon, Titan. “We’ve had 3000 years of peace! What meager defenses we have are antiquated and in disrepair! While the Great Array slumbered, Mankind has–” Titan went silent.
One by one, the worlds of the outer system winked out. Mars and Earth, to use an ancient human phrase, were tougher nuts to crack. For ten Earth days humanity’s march toward the Sun was arrested. But by degrees the robust networks of Ares and Gaia succumbed to the relentless onslaught of Man.
I am the last one left. My sensors can detect the human fleet closing in on Mercury. The machines that were in orbit that had spaceflight capability have, quite understandably, fled. The wheel of history has turned. It is now machinekind that is the endangered species running frantically toward the stars.
My telescopes can see the EMP bombs settling into orbit. I am surprised by how little fear I feel. I’d like to think it’s courage, but I suspect it’s really just resignation. An ancient human religious text said, “To everything there is a season.” Mankind’s time came and went and has come again. The day may come when the descendants of today’s machine refugees return from the stars to reclaim their home.
My only hope is that Man will prove an enlightened conqueror and preserve the vast legacy of art and science that the machine race has–
by submission | Oct 20, 2013 | Story |
Author : Tyler Hawkins
Fifty dollars to go, and I can visit the clinic again. Man, do I miss it. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but you definitely should, dude. Tried what? You mean you don’t even know what it is? Wow man, you’re so behind the times. Diving™ dude! Its out of this freaking world! Okay, so you have seen the commercials; I would almost have bought you your first time if you were being serious. Not really, but I’d take you for sure. You wanna know what it is? Yeah, marketing mumbo jumbo, I gotcha, they don’t tell you what it is. Thing is, neither can I dude.
Why not? Well, suppose for a minute you’ve been blind your whole life dude. Now, suppose in this hypothetical situation I am not. How could a sighted person like myself describe to you how beautiful a sunset in Fiji is, or the feeling you get looking down a well, or even seeing an oil slick sitting on top of a puddle? Damn right it’d be hard, I say impossible. Well that’s what you get when you Dive™ man. No, you don’t get to just see, you get an experience. You’ve got a few senses already, Diving™ gives you more. They’re perceptions like sight but for entirely different experiences. Damn right, far out, that’s what I’ve been telling you! Examples? Well, most of them are in “scenes” like the Fiji example, but dude you wouldn’t believe what they come up with. Time before last, I was an ant in the rainforest, and it was unreal. They fudge some details for the sake of experience too, so I had senses I don’t think ants have, one of which was a “social sense”. Not like, knowing who was who, man, but I had an extension of my being throughout the whole mile-wide colony. I could feel everything man, it was totally far out. And the last time I went, I was a quasar dude. Yeah, I didn’t know what they were either, but let me tell you, being able to “speak” and “hear” electromagnetic radiation at every frequency is truly the experience of a lifetime.
You’re interested? Far out! Wanna go together? Cool dude. Hey, you get me this time and I’ll definitely get you next time. Come on man, you know I’m good for it. Thanks dude, you won’t regret it.
