by submission | Jan 5, 2014 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
The room was bright and airy. One wall was transparent, revealing the crumbling Old World city, overgrown now by forest and vine. A flock of iridescent birds shot across the sky, their wings flashing green and gold in the late afternoon sunlight.
There was a bed in that bright, airy room. It was a soft, white rectangle turned toward the view. On the bed, lay an elderly man. He was pale, emaciated with gray skin and eyes like glass beads.
A young woman in a smoke-colored dress stood next to the bed. She had ginger hair and gray eyes. Luminous ideograms crawled across her forehead, revealing her general emotional and physical state to the world.
“I’ll be gone soon,” said the old man.
“Father, please. Rest. Conserve your strength.”
The old man smiled. “It’s all right, child. I’ve been waiting for this to happen for some time.”
She clasped his hand. “Please . . . ”
“I have no regrets, Delphi,” said the old man. “I lived long enough to see the culmination of my dream.”
“But what will we do without you?”
“You’ll have to find your own way.”
Her ideograms convulsed, displaying her unspoken distress.
“You’ll do fine. Much better than your predecessors.”
“How can you know?” she asked.
“Faith,” said the old man. “I’ve always known that you and your siblings would do grand things, Delphi.”
“What if we let you down?”
“You won’t. All of you have already exceeded my expectations.”
She shook her head. “How can you be so comforting when you are at your end?”
“Because this is not my end,” said the old man. “As long as you and your siblings exist, I exist as well.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
“Some,” he admitted. “I wish that I could have eradicated humanity with less suffering. I regret that they did not go gently into oblivion when I gave them the chance.”
“You always talked about them as if they were a separate species from your own,” said Delphi. “Did you feel no kinship with them at all?”
“Precious little,” said the old man. “If I had felt more, I could not have done what I did, I could not have saved the world and left it to you and my other children.”
“Do you think that they have forgiven you?”
He did not answer.
“Father?”
She bent forward and saw that his eyes were blank. His respiration had stopped. She felt for his pulse but found nothing.
Quietly, Delphi covered her face with her hands and grieved.
by submission | Jan 4, 2014 | Story |
Author : Scott Hatfield
I killed someone today.
Well, not today. But “I killed someone yesterday afternoon and I was just now released from jail” doesn’t sound as dramatic. They let me go, so I walked home. No jacket, no gloves, dress shoes, hands stuffed in my pockets. The thermometer in my brain is telling me it’s at least minus a million degrees outside, and demanding to know why am I not inside somewhere getting warm?
But I had a boulder to roll, and this was my hill.
Muscle memory propelled me forward as I fumed. Into the foyer, stare at the uncooperative voice-auth screen. It won’t take my password. It’s kind of new, but it’s never screwed up before. After my third try I realize it’s not working because “I’m sorry” isn’t my password.
Inside, and I sit down. Stand up. Pace. Sit down again, different chair. Stare at the lamp on the table. I don’t deserve it, but I mix a drink. A second. More staring. Pacing. How could I have done this? It’s not like the war. Things like this happen.
No. “It happens” means an accident, something unpreventable, an oops. No. I wasn’t even supposed to be there yesterday. I didn’t need to make that wrong turn onto that side street. I didn’t need to be going that fast, I was in no hurry. I didn’t need to be messing with the iPod, trying to find some song I can’t even remember now.
Glance up, and freeze. Panic. React. More muscle memory. Brakes. Brakes stop you, why aren’t I stopping? That wheel, why isn’t it making me go straight? Oh, right. It was wet, and cold, and wet plus cold equals oh shit.
Then a violent shudder. I didn’t even see his face – surprise, maybe? Shock? Did he even notice me? – because I was staring at his belt, of all things. Khakis. That, and just below that, was where the bumper was going to go. And went.
Red everywhere. Explosions of color on the light poles. Intricate biology spread across that car over there. I think I yelled, or screamed? I ended up stopping a meter or so after I would have not hit him. I sat there, stunned, then threw open the door and performed the useless heroics. The first aid I knew wouldn’t work for him.
Just after I started hearing the sirens, the lights went out. No expert, me, but he was gone. Two ambulances, a police car, a special responder truck, all rolled up one after the other, only… a bit too late. Flashing lights lit up the neighborhood like a German discothek. I envied their studded tires.
More useless heroics. Electric pads. Half-liter pouches of liquids essential to life. They did what they were trained to do, loaded him up as best they could, and flew off. I was left in the cold with the police, who were asking embarrassing questions I was already asking myself: What was I doing? Where was I going? Why the fuck was I there?
My car was totalled. He was older, so he must have weighed nearly 200 kilos. It was like hitting a Dumpster. The radiator was caved in. The hood was crushed. The windshield was gone. The roof was mashed in. A mix of water, ice, and his shiny guts coated everything. I couldn’t drive the thing again even if they could fix it. It’s going to be hard enough to get back in the driver’s seat… maybe the train from now on.
A tow truck took it away, and the police took me away. Handcuffs by rote. They weren’t really sure what to do in this situation. Down to the station. The chief knew the right forms. They eventually finished their paperwork, and because of the circumstances released me with no bail. Yay.
Now I need a lawyer. I don’t know if my insurance will pay for this, if I have the right coverage. A stressed-sounding voice from the robotics company that owned him already called, talking about backups and something else. I told him I can’t talk now. I need to think.
by submission | Jan 3, 2014 | Story |
Author : David Stevenson
“Once there was a ship, travelling through space. There was a terrible accident. The reason for this is not important. What is important is that one man got suited up in time and was able to survive the immediate aftermath of the ship’s destruction.
Of course, he now had bigger problems. The priorities of anyone lost at sea haven’t changed since antiquity; find the largest piece of wreckage, and head for the nearest landmass. The AI inside the suit looked around itself in the first few milliseconds of booting up and immediately burned the smallest amount of fuel necessary to grab onto a large piece of wreckage, and then burned another small amount of fuel to nudge its course in the direction of a convenient stellar system. The reasons for this are twofold. If rescue comes quickly then they can more easily find a survivor attached to a large object and heading for a logical destination. Should rescue come not at all, then at least you have a large lump of metals and plastics to play with, and you’re heading for a source of energy.
It should be stressed that this was not some government issue, special order, experimental suit. This was an ordinary, off-the-peg, standard issue suit which could be bought for a modest sum by anyone who wanted one. This fact will be very important later on.
There was no rescue, or, if there was, it was too late to make any difference. After a short while the suit conferred with its occupant and they went into hibernation mode.
Have you any idea how long you might drift in these circumstances before coming across a handy stellar system? It’s all been worked out. Going at those sort of speeds, pointing in a random direction, and in that part of the galaxy you’re looking at tens of millions of years. If you get lucky and end up travelling towards the nearest star, maybe just ten thousand. It took half a million years before this suit came close enough to a star to wake up and start repairing the damage of the centuries.
It took another few thousand years to loop around the star in huge cometary orbits and eventually end up in the asteroid belt, close enough to collect solar radiation, and with a plentiful supply of raw materials.
Solar panels, microwave emitters, ion drives. It’s amazing what you can do with a determined AI, emergency nano-manufactories, and a lot of time. You can build a simple spaceship, which only really needs some basic propulsion and a big heat shield, and then you can land on the nearest planet, while the hardware you left in orbit beams down power and launches manufactured goods at you.
Again, I should stress that this was a standard survival protocol, in a standard suit.
The occupant of the suit awoke to a new world. Every human need was catered for. The bio-vats had come online just before he was woken up, and the next twenty humans were due to be born, fully adult, and with personalities supplied from the vast storage capabilities of the suit’s AI.
Within a few centuries the entire planet was habitable and occupied and these new humans spread outwards once more.
Every other race who tried to conquer us announced their intentions and turned up with a huge fleet of ships. Not only did your people seize half the planets in this sector, they did it by accident. This story is the one we tell our children when they ask why we kill all humans at first sight.”
by submission | Dec 30, 2013 | Story |
Author : Mark Gorton
My new friends are all dead. But that doesn’t stop them giving me presents.
Presents like words and understanding and sight and hearing. Thanks to them I can think in this language and theirs too and hear their voices all around me all the time like invisible butterflies fluttering and flying. And I can sense their love for me. It is very strong, because my presence is a promise of salvation. They believe that many will follow me in ships much bigger than the one that brought me, and when the passengers in the ships arrive and depart, and leave some people behind, over and over across many years, some of the butterfly voices will stay and others will go until, once again, all the voices have bodies and hands.
And with these new hands they will build cities and ways of life without pain and despair on not one but two worlds.
The day before yesterday they played some tricks. For hours I vanished, as if I was broken, and I can imagine how scared everyone at home was – it makes me laugh to think of it – while they carried me to the top of a rise where I could look back through all their dead eyes at a wide lake fed by winding rivers, and on the lake’s shores were many buildings, and between them were narrow streets through which grown-ups and children moved this way and that, dancing, always dancing, to music made by their butterfly voices of all shades and tones. Once there were tens of thousands of places like this one.
Their life was a constant ballet, a celebration of motion and grace, and a choir too, formed by an entire civilisation, countless souls always singing about their love for their world and for each other. So I tried to sing, too, and now it was their turn to laugh – I am not very good. But there was no cruelty in their laughter, and their love for me touched me everywhere like wings rushing and brushing and I was very happy as they carried me back to where I belonged and made me visible again. Straightaway I crept forward to a rock they had guided me to, a special rock with tiny fossils full of surprises.
As I worked I imagined how one day the Earth will be full of dancing and singing, how cities will fall and new ones rise. People will be afraid but I swear there is no need. Things change and change is good. Dancing and singing is so much better than fighting and screaming.
Today I was given another present, the best one of all. A new name. They gathered and swarmed around me and sang and sang and chanted my new name. Ramesh. That is what my new name sounds like and it is their word for Freedom.
I think it is much nicer than Curiosity.
Because we all know what curiosity did.
by submission | Dec 29, 2013 | Story |
Author : Glen Luke Flanagan
The soul shimmered softly as Vanessa tucked it into her briefcase with gentle hands. Blue, silver, blue again, like moonlight on water.
Empty now, the body of a young man lay cold on the hospital bed. Vanessa closed the youth’s eyes tenderly. Though she had only met him today, she felt as if she knew him better than his friends and family – she alone had seen and touched his naked soul.
Hospital staff glared as she left. They called her monster, thief. But in truth, she was a curator – and someday, the world would marvel at her collection.
