by submission | Jan 26, 2014 | Story |
Author : Eric Spery
The starship’s Captain stood in the causeway between the dining module and the guest berths. As he stared at the observation port, one of the guests came through from the berths.
The captain knew every passenger he carried on the two month run between Sol and Betelgeuse. This passenger was an old retired military officer from Terra. Just a few years older than himself.
He stopped and stood beside the Captain and stared through the glass at the tapestry of unmoving stars.
“They’re so much more beautiful here,” he said with a slight trace of an accent that the Captain couldn’t place.
“What are?”
“The stars. I’ve never been outside the Earth’s atmosphere. I’ve spent my adult life in cold foxholes looking up at the twinkling stars through the smoke of battle, praying I would live long enough to see the stars again the next night. Praying some day I might leave for good. Leave for the stars and never return.”
“Are they everything you hoped for, sir?”
“They are, Captain. I thank you for taking me on my last journey. To stars that no longer twinkle.”
The old soldier solemnly shook the Captain’s hand and then continued on towards the dining module.
After the portal closed, the Captain turned back to the observation port. How long had it been since he’d noticed the
stars outside? The only thing he saw anymore was his own reflection: old, tired and ready to go home. Hoping to never look again at stars that didn’t twinkle. To go home and never return.
by submission | Jan 25, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jedd Cole
The hours have become mere tick tocks of clock hands since Lonny flipped ahead on his desk calendar this morning, noting with some surprise that the pages stop tomorrow with the End of the World.
He eats his bowl of wheat puffs contemplatively. On his commute across town, he calls his mother, waking her up. They talk about the year since he saw her last, and Lonny’s breakup with Veronica last week, and his sister Fawn’s new baby. There’s a car accident that holds up traffic. He wants to ask her if she’s looked at the calendar, but doesn’t. He arrives and has to hang up.
The stack of forms on his desk is taller than it was yesterday, and he gets to work, sipping coffee. He imagines himself throwing the coffee all over the paper and laughing maniacally and jumping out of windows and running naked through the domed city.
At lunch, he listens to Greg from Marketing while eating his peanut butter sandwich and looking out the window at the dome and the orange sky on the other side. Greg goes on and on about his dogs, how Jupiter snuggles with him in bed, how Smoky pees on the carpet, how Dakota jumps through sprinklers and humps the neighbors. Lonny wants to ask Greg about the End of the World, but the guy won’t stop talking.
There’s still a stack in Lonny’s inbox by five-thirty. The elevator down is full of silent people who don’t look at each other. In the car, Lonny calls his sister Fawn. They talk about the End of the World a little before the topic of her children comes up, and she can’t get off it. The drive back is slow, and he passes two accidents.
When Lonny gets home, it’s six-thirty. Time for Hours of Their Lives on channel four. He turns the screen on and heats up a frozen dinner of fettuccine alfredo.
He feels like he should call somebody else, but can’t think of anyone. The show is over at seven, and he throws away the empty foil container. The next show is Extreme Starbase Makeover and he turns it off. He spends the next hour on the net, browsing the updates, and thinking about the End of the World.
At eight-thirty, a knock on the door wakes him up. He had fallen asleep at his desk, and probably has a red spot on his forehead. Lonny opens the door and sees that it’s Veronica. They say hi, and she asks if she can come in and talk with him. Tenderly, they apologize for the fight last week and settle down with some vanilla ice cream. They watch a movie about promiscuous city people falling in love, and laugh a little at the funny parts.
By midnight, Veronica is asleep, and Lonny is thinking about the End of the World. He checks his watch. Only a few more hours. Looking out the window at Earth’s bright spot in the sky, he decides to step outside to sit in a lawn chair and observe. It happens about three in the morning, and he starts to get tired before it’s over. He reflects on the loss of sleep, but then remembers it’s a long weekend, and tells himself not to worry.
by submission | Jan 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Haydn Kane
The Sergeant sat down across the table from me.
“Commencing interview with Daniel Ambrose,” he said to the room in general and then to me, “you are a resident of Mars?”
“Yes, Olympus City.”
“Ah yes, capital of the North, North Eastern Accord” he said, demonstrating more impressive Wikipedia skills than geographic knowledge. “Do you have any family here?”
“In England? No. But I have a distant cousin in Szechwan.”
“Your passport tells me you are here on holiday.”
“That’s right. I’ve always wanted to visit charming old London.”
“Very well. The arresting officer informs me you committed multiple word thefts this evening in the Shepard and Flock, at 9:33, 9:35 and again at 9:57.”
“I still have no idea what the problem is. All I was talking about was cotton shirts.”
“Yes, you then proceeded to say ‘it’s so hard to get hold of cotton in Olympus’, followed a few minutes later by ‘I was discussing cotton shirts officer’ to the arresting officer”.
“I am none the wiser,” I said, shaking my head.
“Mr Ambrose, I will summon the avatar for ExcellentWear.”
A young woman dressed in an ensemble emblazoned with the company’s logo appeared on a wall display.
“Hello Mr Ambrose, I am the Legal Resolutions App for ExcellentWear,” she said. “You used one of our copyrighted words three times without permission. Would you like to pay the fine now? There’s a ten percent discount for immediate payment.”
“I think I misunderstand – you want me to pay for saying ‘shirt’?
“No, not shirt; cotton Mr Ambrose. Cotton is an important ExcellentWear trademark. You have no usage arrangement with us, or with any Speech Broker.”
I said nothing but stared at the avatar for several seconds. It must have deduced I was bewildered.
“You may wish to re-read your Visa terms and conditions provided to you at Customs. Nevertheless, I recommend paying the fine if you want to avoid jail. Then I suggest subscribing to a Speech Broker – just in case you slip up again.”
I laughed, struggling to grasp the problem.
“Is that likely?” I said.
“There are sixteen thousand words and phrases that belong to various organizations,” the Avatar said, “At the very least stick to using public domain language from now on.”
“My God!”
“Mister Ambrose,” the Sergeant interrupted, “be glad you’re in the privacy of a custody room. The Church charges very highly for one of its more valued words.”
I turned back to the Legal App.
“How much is this fine?”
“6000 Martian dollars. We accept all methods of payment” the avatar said, a rainbow of payment symbols hovering over her head.
It was more than the cost of a shuttle flight to Earth and back. I had the money, but it was a terrific amount to throw away. I was planning on continuing my tour of ancient cities, but perhaps it would be best to catch the next shuttle to Phobos.
“Very well. In which case I’d like to pay later please.” I said, standing up.
“Mister Ambrose, you must pay before you leave police custody.” The avatar said.
I sat back down again.
“Alright, and ten percent off?” I asked, opening my bank account.
“I’m sorry, the immediate payment discount expired thirty seconds ago.”
by submission | Jan 20, 2014 | Story |
Author : J.D. Rice
“What’s wrong?” she asks, dialing her emotion control implant down to ‘concern.’ I watch as her brow furrows and her mouth turns from a smile to a frown. The shift is gradual, like a water droplet running down a window.
“The damn thing’s broken,” the words sound wrong coming from my smiling mouth.
“Stuck on happy?” she giggles, dialing up to a playful tone. She loves that setting.
“No, I want to be happy,” I explain. “But I know the damn thing’s broken.” I flick the wrist monitor with my finger. Not in annoyance. I can’t feel annoyed right now. I can only feel boyish restlessness and a bubbly feeling in my chest. Joy. Rapture. Emptiness.
“You seem happy enough to me,” she says, playing with the hair on my neck. “We could try another setting, if this one doesn’t do it for you.”
I know what she’s going to do before she does it. Sure enough, while one hand remains in my hair, the other moves to the implant on my wrist. But I’m not really in the. . . mood? I place my hand on hers.
“I’ll take it to the shop. Get it repaired.”
Her hands go back to her own dial and pause there. Perhaps she doesn’t know what emotion is appropriate. I don’t watch to see which emotion she chooses, but she sounds less playful when she speaks again.
“Maybe you should just be sad for a while, if that’s what you want.”
Annoyance.
“No one ever wants to be sad,” I sigh, gazing at her dreamily. “Being happy is wonderful. No worries. No stress. That’s why we all carry these things around on our wrists.” Somewhere inside me I know this explanation won’t convince her, not when I refuse to change my setting to match hers. But I can’t let go of this happiness, this optimism. It’s what I need right now. What I so desperately want.
“Whatever, I’ll see what Bobby’s up to,” she says, standing abruptly. She’s moved on to anger. I swear, sometimes I don’t even see her hands move to her own implant. “Or maybe you could stop being paranoid, switch yourself over to jealousy for a while, and stop me.”
I sit in silence while she stands over me, eyes directed at my wrist. We’ve had this battle before. She wants an emotion from me, and normally, I would give it. Emotional adjustment is practically the only thing that keeps us together anymore. Without it, our relationship would fizzle out like a shorted circuit. Do I really want to risk her leaving me, her hooking up with someone else who I know is interested, just so I can keep an emotional setting that I don’t think is working properly in the first place?
In the end I just keep grinning up at her like an idiot, saying nothing. I choose to let her storm off, her fingers ready to change her implant to whatever emotional state she thinks will most convince Bobby to sleep with her. It’s funny, really. A simple switch over to horny for both of them would remove the need for such pleasantries. For whatever reason, the image of them both just flipping a switch and ravaging each other amuses more than anything else that entire day, and despite myself, I start to laugh.
I can’t help it. I laugh until my sides hurt. I laugh, despite having just lost one of the only good things left in my life. I laugh, even as the tears begin to roll down my face.
by submission | Jan 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Sean P Chatterton
‘How long has she been dead?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘How come?’
‘Katherine Danderfield was a plugged in person. She had autresponders for her email, bots to update her social network status and MyFace Blog. Her web presence had auto updates scheduled. No one was aware of her death because her net presence continued uninterrupted.’
‘Regarding her updates, how long can auto responders and auto updates continue without input?’
‘There are two types of bots that can manage a persons virtual life. One type uses heuristic algorithms. The second type uses reasoning response engines. Both could technically continue indefinitely.’
‘Surely something mundane like an unpaid bill would have occurred over time?’
‘All of her income was net derived; all of her bills were paid automatically. Everything was, and still is, up to date.’
‘So there was no idea it wasn’t her responding to emails and etc?’
‘Apparently not.’
‘So how did the police department become aware of her death?’
‘She had an arrangement with her daughter, Sandra, to physically visit her once a year on her birthday. When her daughter visited, Katherine didn’t respond to physical stimulus. A medic was called, who diagnosed her brain dead at the scene.’
‘Where did Katherine live?’
‘Records show Katherine inhabited a pod at the Berkeley Virtual-Life centre. Her physical world is not much larger than a coffin. Records also indicate that she suffered multiple limb loss after an automobile accident seven years ago. So she opted to become a virtual citizen and be hard wired to the net.’
‘Not much of a life was it?’
‘Depends on your point of view. In the physical world she would have required care twenty four seven. In the virtual world she was her own person.’
‘So as she was practically removed from the physical world is it theoretically possible she had been dead for nearly a year?’
‘Yes. Being that she was plugged in, the medicare system could sustain her body indefinitely.’
‘It raises the question of how many others who are plugged in are brain dead, with their bots and autoresponders keeping things updated, doesn’t it?
‘Autoresponder Error: Parameters not set, please rephrase your question and ask again.’
