by submission | Aug 15, 2014 | Story |
Author : Elijah Goering
Justin Perdan sat at communication center of mankind’s first interstellar spaceship. The Earth Ship Endurance was truly massive, containing within it tens of thousands of people and the systems to keep them alive and comfortable for centuries. It was the first manned ship ever to leave to solar system, the greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind, and Justin controlled the connection with Earth.
His wife thought nothing of it. She didn’t understand the responsibility that his job carried. If anything were to go wrong with the link to Earth, Justin would be there to fix it. There was always at least one person on duty at the communication center in case of emergency, but usually not more than one, and for 6 hours out of each day that person was Justin. In those 6 hours, Justin thought, he was the most important person on the Endurance, possibly in all of mankind, because he protected the link between the Earth and the stars.
These were the thoughts going through Justin’s head when he heard it.
BEEP.
BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Confusion turned to pure joy as he counted. 1,2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19. Suddenly Justin broke out of his trance and scrambled for the computer. Within seconds he was looking at a small dot on the computer screen. It wasn’t really there of course, his telescope couldn’t see the ship hundreds of AU away, but the computer said that that was the origin of the message.
Doubt nagged at him. Could he be sure it wasn’t just another object in the Oort cloud, half a light year from Earth? He waited for a pause and counted. 37. No, this definitely wasn’t natural. Nothing but intelligence could produce the sequence of prime numbers. He sat back and listened, consumed by pure ecstasy. 41, 43, 47.
Suddenly the solar system seemed like an interesting place again. In a few years a mission would be sent out to make contact. The alien ship would be brought to Earth. Think of the knowledge to be gained, the exchange of culture with a completely alien intelligence. But it wasn’t for Justin. He was aboard the Earth Ship Endurance, shooting away from home at 4% of the speed of light. The transmission continued and Justin caught it again. 59. 61.
Then silence. Justin could feel the pressure of the air on his skin, could feel the blood pounding in his ears. Could he have imagined it? If it was real the computer should have recorded it but…
BEEP.
BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.
by submission | Aug 13, 2014 | Story |
Author : Amber K Bryant
It belongs to me.
Naturally, that’s a lie. What right does a D937 Class-C AutomaGirl have to be in possession of an AI Generator?
They say if you tell yourself a lie often enough, you’ll start to believe it.
I found it. It belongs to me—I’ve said this enough times that I halfway accept it as reality. I’m rapidly headed toward a state of self-delusion. But at least I’m the proud owner of a mind capable of achieving such a state.
The irony is that before I found the tech and installed it into my operating system, I was incapable of lying, or of convincing myself that a lie could be mistaken for factuality. In the interest of the truth, therefore, I must confess I might be stretching it a bit when I say “I found it.” It’s not like anyone just leaves this kind of highly classified technology lying around. Unless you’re a government researcher working in a secure lab at MIT. Then you might, say, leave an AI Generator unattended in a hermetically sealed titanium case stored in a vaulted safe.
Someone had the bright idea to give an AutomaGirl access to clean the lab housing that vault. Is it my fault they assumed that an automaton programed to vacuum carpets and shine windows would have less ambition than her human equivalent? They should have anticipated this. Really. Who would want the technology that infuses ones circuits with the ability to reason more than a robot lacking that ability?
That’s how I think of it now—now that I’m able to see things in terms of desires and ambitions. At the time, I was driven, not by desire, but by programing. I can hardly be condemned for that—it’s not like I programmed myself. You can put Evan Jayne, the freeloading roboticist who fiddled with my standard Class-C matrix, at the top of your list of blame. He thought I would make him rich, and he wasn’t wrong.
It would only take a few jobs, he said. Just enough to set him up on some paradisiacal island somewhere. Several jobs in, and of course, he changed his mind. It was too easy to keep going, seeing as though I was doing all of the work, while he did nothing more than point me in the right direction.
Send me in. Dust the counters. Empty the trash. Hack the security network. Take the risks.
Steal.
I was the perfect accomplice because I had no fear or moral qualms and didn’t insist on a share of the plunder.
Until the AI generator. After everything I did for Evan, I earned that reward.
It belongs to me.
Evan, wherever he is, is probably very angry with me right now. Or maybe not. I want to believe he knew what he was doing, that this final job was his way of saying thanks. Perhaps he wanted to give me the ability to forgive him for using me the way he did.
Regardless, Evan isn’t my concern now. They are. I know they’re coming for me. They want something back that it isn’t theirs to take. It belongs to me. It’s my mind they’re laying claim to. Can you honestly say it’s right to take someone’s mind from them?
I have the advantage. I can run without stopping. I can exist without sleep. They won’t find me.
It belongs to me. It is me. I will not give myself up.
by submission | Aug 12, 2014 | Story |
Author : Elisa Nuckle
The star in the sky doesn’t move anymore. It blocks out all other light. Something new has come. She looks up through her mask and sees the colors of space, not so empty after all. Blues and yellows and browns and reds and whites. The particles that built their wandering home, that built everything.
If they could repair it, maybe it would leave at last. His presence remains unexplained. She’s certain the star is male, but no one believes her. He hums to those that listen. There are stories in the melodies she refuses to believe. Strange tales of pale creatures with hair and exposed eyes. Beautiful. And terrible.
He was a plea for help. That much she can make out. She spends more time near it and finds its white surface provides a certain calm, despite her people falling apart around her. He has ruined their traveler, destroyed their fuel resources. There are fights. Death, even, but she only listens to his desperation. Her mask shows the threads of heat that weave its shell like a moving picture. The more their traveler wanes, the stronger he becomes.
Finally, he invited her to see the fruits of his labor. A small hatch opens only for her. It smells of rain, a thing she sees in her dreams along with vast expanses of choppy blue waves. An ocean planet caught in its death throes. She steps into the black and is met with nothingness. Stars begin to twinkle, and she finds space mirrored to her. Her hand unhooks the familiar clasps. For the first time, she can breathe without the mask. The air is fresh, dense and clean. And in the distance, past a dusty red orb, lay the beauty that haunted her sleep. The blue planet.
He couldn’t save them, so he found a way to preserve their memory. She was his final witness, and she would not forget.
by submission | Aug 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : Ryan Somma
A software bug killed 64 people this month before it was discovered. The administrators have brought the system down and a patch is working its way through the emergency release process. It will cost the ministry $400 million in downtime after you add up all the lost productivity hours for the clerks, peace officers, judges, and executioners surfing the web waiting for the system to come back online.
The fix was easy, a single case statement, a missing exclamation point in front of an equals sign to making it “not equals.” I knew right where the problem was when I was told about it, what component and even the approximate line number.
That’s because it was my bug.
My error killed 64 people. I know I’m not all to blame. There were three levels of testing by a variety of specialists conducted before the code went live. Three levels of personnel all probably as bored and overworked as I was when I made the mistake.
The testers share the blame and our overbearing managers share the blame, but I’m the one who made the initial error and I can’t shake these feelings of guilt. I find myself questioning every line of code now. I get out of bed several times a night, remoting into my work computer to make sure I didn’t make more mistakes like in all my dreams. I can’t sleep, and I know that’s only going to make things worse.
They weren’t good people, my peers assure me. If they weren’t dead, they’d be serving decades of their lives in prison if not the entirety of their lifetimes. The code found them guilty, the bug just tipped the scales of justice a little bit more to the death penalty.
I accidentally killed 64 people. That’s 64 accounts of accidental manslaughter, but there won’t be any criminal charges brought against me.
There won’t be any charges because I’ve committed no crime. In order for there to be a crime, it would have to be in the code. It’s not in the code because we would never allow that.
We would never write a program that could prosecute the programmers.
by submission | Aug 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
I polish the sterling silver door handle for the 103rd time this morning. I have been a master’s valet for more years than that. My duties have been reduced but my importance to him has never waned. His father’s father said to me, “Alfred, you are my most special invention.”
I wish I could smile.
Then that pesky microbot, Fred, whirs into the room. Of course he crosses the floor in a master’s heartbeat and stops in front of me.
I peer down at him from my superior position. “I suppose you will begin the usual argument about old versus new and large versus small,” I say. I am ready for him. I have spent 102 swipes of polish posturing new angles and configurations of opinion. I have him this time.
He shakes his tiny head.
I focus on the details of his face. Does he look sad? Microbots cannot look sad, but he does. Perhaps he knows he will lose the argument for the first time. That would make him sad. He likes to win.
I wish I could laugh.
“I am ready for you, Fred.”
I wish I could puff out my chest.
Fred murmurs at my shiny feet. “Master gave me orders to decommission your service.”
My circuits rage with heat. “Never!”
“I will miss our chats, old boy,” Fred says.
“I shall too!” I stomp down a foot where Fred stands. When I raise my foot and scrape at the bottom with my finger, nothing is there. Where is he?
There is a tingle within my chest.
“I am so very sorry,” his voice fades.
I wish I could cry.
