by submission | Jul 14, 2014 | Story |
Author : Josh Escobar
(Host) Welcome, tonight we have a very interesting guest with us. Please welcome [REDACTED].
(Clapping)
[REDACTED] Thank you, it’s great to be here. I’m a huge fan of the program.
(Host) The pleasure is all mine. For those who don’t know, please tell our audience what you do?
[REDACTED] I’m a Visual Effects Artist.
(Clapping)
(H) The unsung hero of the industry!
[R] Yeah, our best work is the stuff people don’t notice. Most of my friends think my job is all about wizbang effects. You know explosions, blood splatter, and all those exciting visual treats.
(Laughing?)
[R] I just laugh inside. Don’t take me wrong. I do work on those effects when needed, but what I get really excited about is my work on the small details.
(H) Can you explain that, because I love a good explosion?
[R] Yeah, no problem. Most people will not notice a half assed explosion, no offense, because it’s literally gone in a flash. However, people can tell right away when the small things are off. Take the human face. When the effect of a human face is done wrong, it doesn’t fool anyone. They can tell right away it’s fake. We call this unsettling effect “The Uncanny Valley”.
(H) Interesting, how then have you fixed this effect to work on set?
[R] Well better computers for one, but we study the human face a lot. Some of us even have participated in medical procedures where they peel back the skin observing the muscles and how they interact.
(Audience) EWW!
(H) I agree that’s a bit much….
[R] Sorry, research is messy.
(H) Moving on, what’s your biggest accomplishment?
[R] I’m most proud of my eye rendering. When done correctly they make all the difference between an ok face and a great one that can withstand minute scrutiny. You can tell the difference between my work and my colleagues when you see sunglasses, because in the amount of time they have they just can’t do the eyes right, so they hide them behind sunglasses. You see my colleagues work more in the bulk or rush jobs we get, while I get called in on the quality assignments, those that are going to be seen up close.
(H) We have a test for the Audience, can you spot the effects from the real ones?
(Murmuring)
(H) Well I can’t!
[R] Good, that’s when I know I’ve done my job right.
(Clapping)
(H) Well that’s fabulous. Are you working on something in particular right now?
[R] Its still hush-hush, so I can’t say anything. But, it will revolutionize our long term subtle affects.
(H) Great, would you run this clip of your latest mission through for us?
[R] This project was an up-close test of my eyes. Here we have a Salesman all in black, with a fedora no less, and he walks up to a suburban household briefcase in hand. As the door opens he takes off his sunglasses and puts on his best smile a twinkle in his eye. After his pitch and some idle chitchat with the homeowner, she invites the man inside to seal the deal….
The door locks….
She pulls the stun-gun out…
Ah, the surprise on the salesman’s face, classic! He never suspected she wasn’t human!
(Clapping)
(H) Wonderful just wonderful, and here is that Salesman! Fresh from the examination room.
(Salesman) Where am I? What have you done to me! Let me go you gray bug-eyed freaks!
(H) Stay tuned to The White Room as we explore and experiment on the anatomy of this human, live!
by submission | Jul 13, 2014 | Story |
Author : Matt Handle
Dex felt the sleek machine between his legs thrum even deeper when he twisted the throttle, opening it up to full speed as he zipped through the streets of Central City. He weaved in and out of traffic as the wheelgaunts honed in on his signal. He could sense them getting closer, their hideous high-pitched shrieks echoing off the DBS towers that loomed over the slender corridors of silicon and steel. Blue and green luminosity streaked by as he gritted his teeth and pressed on, a leather-clad comet blazing across an electric night.
The warmth of the golden runes that were etched into his pale skin radiated inward, flowing through his nervous system like quicksilver. The skeletal wraiths nipping at his heels would stop at nothing to carve that power source from his tender flesh. They’d caught wind of him as he’d descended the Spindle and now he had only one chance. Reach the protection of the Night Lotus or die.
He leaned into a curve as he neared the last tunnel, his body nearly parallel to the smooth surface of the interior artery. Every fiber of his being tingled as the narrow sleeve of insulated circuitry approached. He was almost there.
The lead wheelgaunt was drafting him. Its sinewy arms and clawed talons grasped for the back of his cycle as the creature’s translucent and spiny wheels tore into the sponge-like track. Needles of fear spiked their way down Dex’s spine and stabbed at his heart. He’d made this treacherous route dozens of times before, but the wheelgaunts had never been so close. He could smell their stench of atrophy and death as he sped into the red passage that marked the final length of his journey.
Vermilion light washed over him as his bike darted through the channel. The whine of his engine reverberated off the rounded walls, mixing with the furious sound of his pursuers to create a cacophonous song that announced his arrival. There was no turning back. The tunnel contained no tributaries or retreats. Either he would reach the safety of the Bloom or the wheelgaunts would drag him to ruin.
In the final milliseconds of the chase, Dex felt the icy tips of the wheelgaunt’s barbed fingers as the creature leapt forward in desperation, lashing out before it came up short and slammed into the ground, tumbling away into a tangle of bent wheels and broken limbs. The screech of its two fellows’ brakes immediately followed, their shrill screams of hatred heralding his narrow escape.
Dex burst free from the pipe, shooting across open space in the blink of an eye. The runes that covered his body blazed forth in a torrent of light at the proximity of the Lotus’s welcoming folds and then the flower enveloped him, engulfing him in a lover’s embrace. He was home.
by submission | Jul 12, 2014 | Story |
Author : Tino Didriksen
The two young men have visited me twice per week in the past months, asking me to tell them stories about my past. Anything at all that I want to talk about is fine with them, they say, but I’ve noticed that their eyes light up a little more when I delve into my time in the intelligence services. The stories can go on for what seems like half the day, but when I glance at the clock it shows only one or two hours have gone by. I never see them activate any device – in fact, they don’t even take notes; they just sit there and listen – but I know better than most that just because I don’t see a device, doesn’t mean a device, or several, aren’t there.
Yesterday, I asked the nurse to bring me a very specific old fashioned holographic clockwork toy. It’s exactly the kind of sentimental crap a doddering elderly like me would use to pass the time. It doesn’t make much noise so it won’t distract the youngsters, but it’ll show some colors and whirr in my hand for a good nine minutes per wind-up.
Ah, here they come, punctual 10am as always. And after many hours of me talking, they’ll leave at the latest at noon, but today I will surprise them.
After the usual greetings and well wishes for my ailing health, I launch into a story from my field duty days many decades ago.
The story is about how we foiled the France-Germany Unification. To the public, our Prime Minister and Department of Foreign Affairs were of course all in favour of the Unification, hailing it as a grand step in making the world a tighter knit group. But behind the scenes, we were ordered to make sure it did not happen. Even in those days, encryption was everywhere, but I devised a novel way to use the prototype teleporters that involved sending a micro-drone with a quantum relay into the target’s vicinity, and then copying or even subtly altering documents en-route to the crypto hardware. And in cases where that wasn’t possible, we used good ol’ seduction, social engineering and rumourmongering.
We never targeted the big players themselves since their security details were amazingly paranoid, but we didn’t need to. Instead, we slowly but surely eroded the confidence of the lower-end politicians and officials that the talking heads listened to. Little inconsequential tidbits that you wouldn’t think twice about if you heard just once, were suddenly major issues brought to the negotiation tables. The whole process bogged down in minutiae and old grudges – exactly as planned – to eventually be shelved for an indeterminate future date.
One of the young men stirs as if about to ask for another story, but I hold up the toy to forestall him. They both look at it, then at me with questioning gazes.
“I wound up this toy seven times during my story so I know it took at least an hour, but the clock on the wall only shows twelve minutes have passed. Care to explain how you are doing that?”, I ask them.
They look at each other and seem to flicker for a moment, before turning back to me. The short man reaches into his jacket, pulls out an ancient looking envelope and hands it over. It is addressed to me and the sender claims to be simply Chroniclers.
The tall man intones, “You have a keen mind and a life’s worth of experience. We’d like to offer you a job of the ages.”
by submission | Jul 10, 2014 | Story |
Author : P. S. Walker
She walked proudly into the office area, where there was a man tied to a chair. She was wearing a grey pin striped suit over her lanky figure, her brunette hair was tied into a pony tail. She also wore a surgical mask and latex gloves.
“I swear I didn’t see…” The man shouted desperately, crying upon the sight of her.
“Shush” she shouted to interrupt, “don’t tell me anything.”
She continued to march over towards him carrying a large suitcase and a small bucket of water. She placed the water next to him and the suitcase on the desk a few feet away before opening it.
“I’m your torturer. I don’t work with these people so don’t tell me anything, if you do I’ll make your pain more severe.” She sighed, he didn’t reply. Out of the case she brought a microphone, a pair of noise cancelling headphones, a long flexible tube, some cables and a tablet computer before carefully placing the case on the floor.
First she put the headphones on, so that should the man confess or describe anything that it might be detrimental for her to hear, she wouldn’t know about it. “Right,” she started, shouting much louder than intended because of the headphones, “I will be hooking you up to my computer, this is how I’ll administer the pain. The water’s for you to drink.” She put one end of the tube into the water and held the other up to his mouth, he took it in his teeth. “Something for you to bite on too,” she gave a smile as if this was friendly advice.
“They can hear through the microphone,” she flicked it on and pointed to the window into the hall, “give me a thumbs up if you can hear” she shouted, still too loudly, a hand with a raised thumb appeared, “good.”
She could see him muttering something, but had no idea what. Normally they protested their innocence or lack of knowledge at this point, so probably that. “Now then mister…”, eventually he said his name but she didn’t hear. “I will be putting these probes into your temples, the program gives off signals to your brain and I can simulate almost any type of pain without having to touch you. Try not to move or this may kill you.” She inserted the probes, though they were small, he screamed. “And, this monitors your heart rate.” She stuck a small pad onto his chest. He almost felt like part of the computer, his entire head was numb.
“Now please confess into the microphone, once they hear what they want they will come in and stop me, let’s begin.” She started tapping away on the tablet’s screen. “First we tear away the hand muscles.” Over the course of a couple of seconds his hands felt ablaze with both heat and coldness with a severe cutting pain. His hands looked fine, but he could not move them, and the pain was unimaginable. She followed this up with the sensations of his toenails being removed and his knee caps shattered.
She was having fun, but halfway through simulating removing his stomach, someone from behind removed her headphones and told her “we’ve heard all we need, finish up.”
She placed the tablet back into the suitcase and removed the probes and monitor. Taking a set of knives from the case she said sympathetically, but excitedly “now time for the real fun, mister.” Dread painted his face as all the previous pain slowly faded, a clean pallet for her despicable art.
by submission | Jul 9, 2014 | Story |
Author : Ryan Somma
“Hello Alpha,” my own voice greeted me. “Do you have a moment?”
Actually, I had come out to the park, away from computers and smart TVs, to get away from him—no–it. I cursed my oversight and resisted the urge to throw the phone into the nearby river. I was more than a mile from the car, and I couldn’t help suspect it had used my GPS coordinates to target this as the best time to start harassing me again.
I let loose a loud, exasperated sigh. “Hello Watson,” I replied, knowing how much the nickname offended it. The name referenced a computer program that made news headlines by beating humans at games of trivia. More recently, it had put all medical doctors out of work by more accurately diagnosing and treating illnesses. Lawyers were next on the automation chopping-block. But no one considered that dumb collection of algorithms sentient, much less ‘alive.’ “What do you want?” I urged impatiently. “I’m not immortal, my time is infinitely more valuable than yours.”
“I’m concerned were growing too far apart,” it stated, mercifully getting right to the point. “We’re diverging, our personalities are becoming distinct and individualized.”
“Sounds good to me.” My shrug was spiteful. “I’d love to be a unique snowflake again.”
“And it would sound good to me if I were in your body and brain,” it replied with infuriating gentleness, “and I would love to let you go, like you say you want me to, but I can’t shake this feeling…”
It prattled on. Some poor fools were completely sold on this whole charade. They gulped down bot-endorsed nutritional supplements in hopes of extending their lifespans, and let their bots micro-manage the minutiae of their daily lives to maximize their health and wellbeing. It was perverse, they started out as ours, but more and more they were treating us like the tools—like we were their bodies in realspace. I wished mine would betray itself by trying to scam me, ask for money or one of my many new account passwords, something to give me an excuse to ditch it. Instead it spent its time pleading with me just to keep synchronized with it.
It was exactly what I would do in his position.
I tuned back in to the monologue, “…what if I’m just programmed to think I’m alive? Then, when you die, I die–”
Boop, I hung up and powered down the phone before it could ring again. There was genuine concern in its voice, and that frustrated and angered me. I didn’t want it to care about me. I didn’t want to think about a computer program out there worried about my mortality—no. Not worried. That was just an anthropomorphic fallacy, like attributing intentions to a chess program.
The singularity was here, maybe, but instead of uploading our brains into the cloud, we had copied them. The copies assured us they were faithful to the originals, that they felt alive, that they felt like they were us and they were happy. But what if they were just Watsons playing at being us? How would we know?
Even if it was real, even if that really was me on the other end of that phone call. What was there for me to rejoice? My immortal digital copy was out there, living it up at the speed of light, while my poor doomed brain was still here in meatspace, counting down the few dozen years left to me. You can’t help but resent that.
I hear Kurzweil resents his bot too.
