by submission | Aug 23, 2014 | Story |
Author : Colm Scully
When Henry hit the curb he knew it was over. The sun had got in his eyes. He had bent his left wish bone badly and knew he could not walk straight. He called the recovery service and they lifted him into the van. He tried to keep upbeat, chatting with the driver as they headed for the depot.
He sat there in an armchair surrounded by old robots, all de-energised. He saw the look in his owner’s eyes as she talked to the engineer. He over-heard “no parts available” and “not much point”.
“We’ll be back tomorrow Henry. We’ll see you then”
He avoided her gaze, within twenty four hours the information would start draining from his memory banks.
He began to think back over his long life, his being switched on, the journey from the factory. He was a prototype, first in a long line of models, built to last. Before they cheapened the materials. That was back when robots were King, could do no wrong. He worked hard for all his owners, helping them with human life’s practicalities: childcare, car maintenance, adult education. He sniffled slightly. He now wished he’d been more careful, worn those sun glasses Margaret had given him.
She’d been good to him since the anti-revolution; the Advent of Sameness. Took good care of him while others were thrown on the scrap heap. He moved in his chair to ease the pain, reaching down and rubbing the human like skin across his leg. His ankle was skewed ninety degrees outwards. He looked around him, he was just an old machine. Gone out of production since the technology cap. No one cared for his kind any more. People lived as people now, happy with what they had, and Margaret had no money to repair him. Even if she could scrimp it together, he knew there was no way back.
He thought of all the changes that he had known in his life: Omni–science, Suicide Rights, The trips to Mars, Zero Warfare, The Cybernetic Bulge, and then the changes stopping change. It was strange he thought, as some one dimmed the lights,how the smallest event can alter everything. Like when parents were arrested for stealing sweets from their children’s party bags. It made all the humans stop and think, where were they going? Like hitting a curb at four miles an hour, that you always knew was there, your eyes blinded by the sun.
by submission | Aug 22, 2014 | Story |
Author : K. J. Russell
The moment of transition was 7:34 AM today, July 17th, and this one was unique in that nobody saw it coming. Haverforth Diedeli finally stirred awake thirty-four minutes after his alarm clock began to buzz at him, and at the moment his eyes popped open and his brain started to churn out thoughts, he was the main man. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Hatherforth was the single pivotal human out of the entire species, and in a span of seconds, we are sure you all noticed.
We would like to apologize for any inconvenience and offer this explanation:
Transitions like this are usually prepared for by S-Mundi network adminstrators. The Mindshare Protocols most often focus on a single human for a few decades, since they automatically route into the most intelligent human brain hooked into the network, and that doesn’t change as often as you’d think. Ninety-five percent of human intelligences fall naturally into the range of below-average through super-genius, but there’s a few outliers in the mega-genius range, and one stand-out. For the past thirty years, the mindshare protocols have been routing through Flynn McKermin, whose IQ is an entire standard deviation above the next highest human. So the Mindshare Protocols automatically utilize his intellect, via the S-Mundi network, to increase the intelligence of all connected human brains. So great has been McKermin’s contribution that for these thirty years, the mean intelligence of our entire race was raised by slightly over a standrad deviation, with a mean of 120.
As near as we can tell, however, something in Haverforth Diedeli’s brain switched into place this morning and his IQ shot up, however temporarily, to over 250. This, of course, triggered the mindshare protocols to switch to him and within minutes of that moment, the human race suddenly had a mean IQ rating of 175.
Everything stopped for a moment, and then moved beautifully. Thought became fluid, smooth, vibrantly colorful. In a whirl of ten minutes, novels were plotted, algorithms resolved, models of the universe were turned upside-down, old religions collapsed and rose as newer, more morally superior institutions. Here at S-Mundi Corp, we underwent the quickest and most efficient coporate restructuring in the history of business! The entire universe seemed to move under our feet, but it did so deliberately, and we watched its each and every twitch with complete understanding.
At 7:42 AM, however, Haverforth Diedeli died of hemorhaging in the brain, and the S-Mundi network suffered a complete collapse. He was found dead standing up, leaning against a wall, his hand clenched around a pen so tightly that it had shattered between his fingers. Written over cheap, hideous wallpaper, were the desperate words: “You fools! It’s so obvious! It’s right in front of you! It’s in your eyes! It’s in your eyes! It’s in – rathgn mthrath senesh in your eyes mthrath rathgn sle the gods in my tumor the fsleshr say it aloud-”
S-Mundi network administration would like to warn all of you to show extra care in your decision-making while the network remains down, as the current mean intelligence of humanity has returned temporarily to 100. Downtime is expected to be minimum, and we are all doing our best to fix the problem in such a way that it does not occur again. We are also taking this opportunity to apply a hotfix to certain teritiary functions, improving the system as a whole. The Mindshare Protocols are expected to revert to Flynn McKermin when the network comes back up sometime tomorrow morning.
– Office of the Chair of PR, S. Mundi Corp
by submission | Aug 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Tamara Rogers
They gave me a million eyes. Well, not a million, more like a terra-billion, a bajillionzillion. All x to the power z equals I want it I see it.
Excuse me if I’m not too precise, there’s buzzes coming in and network trails running through. Dope data distraction.
Take the details of my promotion. You could read it if you like but it’s all clauses and multipoints and corporate trash. The upshot is that my work on Animal Farm Mark 4: Kids’ Revolt was just too fucking good. I ran it smoother than if I was taking candy from a baby. It was a bit harder when they’d activate the RattleBattleTM weapons but that only usually happened at level 4 and mostly they just stuck to the kindergarten stages talking weed and dates and shit.
But this is something else.
<HTTP ERROR 400: Bad Request>
Ignore that, just glitching. You know, first day ripples spreading out, settling in.
Where was I?
That’s it. It was all toddler play, pissing about monitoring kids and their pumped up avis, throwing my weight around in their digital playground. This is just something else. You should have seen this guy just then; paging through the usual facetime porn they all go for, then he only goes and gets his ferrets out. Bloody hell, I don’t think they liked it. Cardboard tube Armageddon.
<HTTP ERROR 404: Not Found>
Forget that.
Tell me – what would you do if you were everywhere? Cos that is what it’s like. All the tentacles of the world, they’re all right here – hardwired fingers dripping into my brain, all hot and sticky and delicious.
<HTTP ERROR 403: Forbidden>
Of course, this is technically probation, but, you know, fuck that – how can you be on probation when you’re the one in charge of the grid? I make the rules. I am the rules.
Jesus, this is awesome. You should be here, you should be me – get to see it all, take it in. But, hey, there’s only one of me and it’s fucking busy.
<HTTP ERROR 429: Too Many Requests>
It’s coming in quick now. Faster, harder. I’ll tell you more but, hang it, I’ve gotta see this… There’s a woman in China and her voice is leaking through like it’s pure fucking silk… There’s a kid in Devon and he fancies himself a crackhack. He’s sending out reams of cover-emails that ain’t even coming close to hiding his bandwidth Ponzi scheme… There’s a guy in Belize and he’s running sermons and preaching his church, making noise over the web and calling himself God.
I squeeze down on his network supply, watch his face flicker into nothingness.
I turn him to black.
Cos he’s wrong. He can’t be God.
Cos I am.
<HTTP ERROR 418: I’m a Teapot>
by submission | Aug 20, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jackson Fitzjames
Anonymous trespassing isn’t very easy in a surveillance state. Or, at least, that’s what they want you to think.
The rocketbike is juddering along between my legs in a way that’s going to chafe soon. If I get any more growth spurts, I’m not going to fit on it any more, and then we’ll have to build some new transport.
You see, the Powers That Be aren’t very good at thinking up new things. This is part of their appeal- they’ve already figured out how people are liable to rebel, and they have countertactics for everything. If someone tries to infiltrate them, they’ll know even if all of the passwords have been figured out. They can turn on a dime in a thousand critical ways, and restructure themselves even if there are only a few cells of them left, like a horrible disease.
However, this is also their undoing. Some of us, the older ones, just roll dice and use self-made random number generators to pick their actions, which starts producing glitches in the system. Some of us, however, are a bit more direct.
The rocketbike is a bike with a lot of propulsion systems attached to it. Nothing fancy, not like the jetpacks that a few people have come up with. They’re clunky and work with roughly the same physics as our weapons of the week, modified potato guns. The guns aren’t altered, because that would be too obvious- the potatos are just stuffed with explosives.
The Powers That Be can see all rooftop activity using sensors built into their surfaces, they can track all road movement with basic cameras stuck to the building and the odd checkpoint, and they can track rogue helicopters with long-distance radar. They don’t bother to look for teenagers reckless enough to stick propulsion technology (and occasionally, hoses) to a bunch of scrapped bikes and start flying through windows. Add some construction paper masks and you’re set.
Speaking of that, here’s the building we’re breaking into tonight. Straight ahead, it’s nothing but glass, wood, and juicy, juicy insides.
I put the pedal to the metal, and let come what may.
by submission | Aug 17, 2014 | Story |
Author : RM Dooley
The rogue tampons rolling across the trunk floor and abandoned high heel tell me it’s a girl’s car. Probably this girl’s car.
I can’t move much. Duct tape binds her hands, feet, and stretches over her mouth. The taillight is kicked out and the flashlight next to her flickers in and out of life. She must have tried to get attention before I took control. I doubt she woke up in time for it to do any good. No glow from street lamp or car light slips in through the break, already too far down an empty back road.
Whatever drug he used still pumps through her, giving me a secondary disconnected dizziness. The throbbing head, a physical blow rather than chemical, registers to me more like radio static than actual pain.
The car stops gliding and begins a jolting trundle down an unpaved road.
Dammit. I bang her head against the trunk’s floor. I’d scream if I could. How far away can the driver be? Four, five feet difference in where my consciousness landed? If I’d taken him, she would make it.
I could’ve turned the car back around. Straight to a police station. I could’ve saved her.
I can’t cry. My body is at least twenty miles away, safely slumped across my couch. So she cries for me, hot angry tears over the five feet that killed her.
Not like I can aim. The mind wanders where it will. I should consider myself lucky I found her, working off a name and face until I latched on to one. Desperation more than anything let me find her, mine drawn to hers.
The crunching gravel goes quiet. Her heart thuds as the car door opens and shuts. She’s not aware and I keep my hold. Neuroimaging shows that while I’m in control the host’s brain functions as if in a very deep sleep, near comatose. She won’t know, won’t feel. And I can at least get a look at his face.
He opens the trunk and smiles down at her. At me. Clean shaven, early thirties. Even in the dark I know he’s handsome. Dark cropped hair, straight nose, hungry blue eyes. I carve his face into memory to bring back to my body.
I glare up at him. You’re dead asshole
I won’t report him to the police. No facial composite, no falsifying witness reports so the courts will believe how he was tracked down. Not this one. This is going to be personal. I have his face and I’ll share a memory. That’s enough for a wandering mind like mine to eventually track him down with.
He picks her up, almost lovingly until I start to fight. To me, the breaking nose feels like buzzing discomfort.
Whatever he does, I’m not letting go. And he’s not done with the ritual. One he carries out with disturbing efficiency.
But I won’t let go. She doesn’t have to know this. Let her last memory be whatever final prayer she clung to; another driver would notice bound hands waving out from the trunk. Someone would find her. Save her. She doesn’t have to know the climax to his gentle kiss, the pretty practiced lies he whispered to lure her away.
I’ll leave when she does. The last cut that bleeds us from her body. I can’t save her, but I can spare her. No one should have to experience this.
I would know.
