by submission | Dec 22, 2014 | Story |
Author : Burke Lerch
Alan always visited the same diner on the same date, at the same time. 7:43 P.M. Ten minutes after he first ordered the patty melt and fries, and one minute before he stood up from his table to step into the bathroom.
With a loud pop he was back in the same stall, the second one from the door. It was the best patty melt he’d ever had. Arguably the best patty melt anyone had ever had, unless someone else out there was so inspired by a sandwich that they had also built a time machine just to eat the same patty melt again, again, and yet again. Alan wasn’t an unreasonable man. He’d tried to take the mundane route and order the same meal. It was never the same. The toasted and buttered bread was never quite as greasy, or the fries were just a little stale. No, it had been worth it. There were those that would chastise him for using something as remarkable as time travel just to grab a bite to eat, but then they hadn’t eaten that patty melt.
He stepped out of the stall and pushed the bathroom door open. Perfect, yet again. Lacy was just setting the plate down at Alan’s table
“Right on time, Alan!” Lacy gave him the same lopsided smile as the last 246 times he’d made the trip.
“Better believe it.” He’d gotten the timing down to perfection on trip seventeen.
Alan slid into his booth, mouth already salivating at the sight of that beautiful sandwich. He reached out to slide the plate closer to him, but then stopped. He stopped, frozen, and staring at the plate that had sat before him so very many times.
A chip. There was a chip in the plate. There had never been a chip before. Where did the chip come from? How could there be a chip? He frantically began counting his fries. Thirty-one, thirty-two… Thirty-three?
This was bad.
This was very bad. What did it mean? Alan dreaded the answer, so much so that he missed 7:46 PM, the first bite. He quickly snatched the sandwich off the plate and sank his teeth into it. Stop. Was it different? He couldn’t tell. A part of his mind was begging him to just continue eating as if nothing unusual had happened. Oh, and he tried. He tried with every fiber of his being, but the reliably delicious meat now had the taste of unpalatable paradox.
Madness. It was madness! The world had gone mad for poor Alan. The trustworthy ticking and tocking of time had betrayed him, just when he least expected it. In that outdated diner with its tiled floors, a man’s world was falling to pieces.
“Is everything alright, Alan?” It was Lacy. The despair written on Alan’s face must have been screaming for some $3.50/hr concern.
“Alright?” he screamed, exploding from his stupor in a storm of condiments and curly fries. “The laws of time and space are failing around us, and you ask if I’m alright?”
Lacy was alarmed, but in a detached manner. Alan wasn’t the first to fall off his rocker in a two-dollar diner on a Saturday night.
“Don’t you understand what this means?” Alan shouted. “The universe is going to…”
His words were replaced by one puff of dusty air before he collapsed to the floor. Not eating the patty melt this time meant he’d never eaten the patty melt, and so he hadn’t eaten in months. The police reported the death as starvation, as much as it vexed them to do so. Paradox was a funny thing.
by submission | Dec 21, 2014 | Story |
Author : Emily Stupar
“Have you tried turning it off and back on again?”
A long sigh echoed through the phone, followed by a man’s carefully snipped words. “All. Manual. Commands. Have been. Disabled.”
“Yes,” the technician replied. “But maybe a reboot-”
“It’s locked us in a fucking supply closet!”
There was a fumbling and scraping, followed by a woman’s muffled voice. “Getting upset won’t help us, Glenn.” And then clearly through the speaker, “Hello? Are you still there IT?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Claudia. Your name is Leslie?”
“That’s right. Listen, ma’am-”
“Leslie, I need you to let me talk to Paul. Last time our building’s computer intelligence started acting up, Paul helped us.”
“I’m sorry, but Paul isn’t available. But if you could describe to me-”
“Arynn, then? I think I talked to someone named Arynn once.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s just me. I’m sure we can figure out why your computer’s security systems are malfunctioning if we just-”
“Security? No! Are you even listening? Your product [i]told[/i] us it would [i]prefer[/i] to analyze Holst rather than take commands. Listen.” There was a beat of silence and then the tinny notes of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age” from beyond the closet door. “We knew the computer had a few…quirks, but it’s never taken physical action against us before. Understand, Leslie? Now, we’re locked in, and we don’t know if it’s going to let us out. You need to help.”
Scratching, and then Glenn came back on. “IT! I think I know what the problem is!”
“Oh, not this again,” Claudia groaned in the background.
Glenn continued on, unabated. “You guys must have sold hundreds, thousands, of these units to companies across the world, right? Have you received any complaints regarding abnormal energy consumption?”
“Sir, I’m not sure I-”
“I’ve looked into it and, right before these little…discrepancies with the computer, there’s always a spike in energy consumption from our building. I wasn’t sure what the cause was, but I think it’s the computer intelligence. It’s like it’s [i]eating[/i] more energy than usual, understand?”
Silence from the phone.
“The computer likes it. It gets all cheery and performance jumps. And then this: a crash and it starts to lose sight of its operational parameters. It performs unnecessary duties and ignores directives. It’s just never been quite this bad before.”
“I’m not sure what you mean, sir. You think it gets some kind of boost and then drops to a low point?”
“Exactly! It gets high, or drunk, or whatever, and then after it… sobers up, there’s always this period of odd behavior.”
Claudia’s voice: “That’s ridiculous. Our computer is not an addict.”
The technician began to speak but Glenn cut in. “Hold on, I think it’s the power company calling back on the other line. Finally.”
Silence, and then his voice came back on a much quieter line. “They cut power to the building. The music’s stopped. The computer’s shut down, so I guess we don’t need your help anym-”
Claudia’s voice cut in, quick and tense. “Do you hear that?”
“Oh, God, it must be the back-up generator.”
The three people sat in silence, waiting.
Through light static, the technician heard the music return as the computer intelligence came slowly back online. The notes of “Mars, the Bringer of War” rumbled through the phone.
by submission | Dec 20, 2014 | Story |
Author : Stephen Whaley
“Step right up! Just step right up here! Come and see the incredible Marveloso. Come see him lift a car over his head. Come see him do a hundred hand-stand push ups. Come see him jump over ten feet into the air with a single bound. Come on, ladies and gents, only two credits for a ticket.”
Two boys ambled past the broken down circus tent and stopped to look at the garish poster of a muscle-bound man balancing a huge barbell on his head. The carnie, seeing their interest, renewed his cries.
“Come see Marveloso himself, folks! See him do a double summersault. Watch in awe as he executes the spine-breaking death drop!”
The first boy put his hand into his pocket and rummaged around for a moment before extracting two battered coins. He tossed them up thoughtfully and caught them again as they were still rising.
“Do you want to go? It could be fun.”
Floyd shook his head. “I’ve seen it before. They just get an immigrant and have him perform stunts. It’s not like this guy is anything special. Now come on, I gotta get home.”
The pair picked up their pace, skipping in the peculiar manner that only native Lunites ever fully master.
by submission | Dec 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Michael Strang
I know my experiment is a success when I open my eyes in an unfamiliar place. It takes longer to start to wonder what that means for me. A sudden shock of pain interrupts my train of thought as the neural probes retract from my skull, leaving behind a pounding headache. Reaching up to clasp my pounding head, I freeze completely when I realize I don’t recognize my hands. These ones look older, lighter-skinned, heavily marked with scars and callouses. Not mine.
“What did you expect?” I hear myself mumble. The lights in this room are too bright, they’re making it difficult to think this through. “This was exactly what you were hoping to accomplish.”
Thinking this, I realize that someone must be running the procedure. I fight through the blinding pain and survey the room. It reminds me of my own lab, in some ways, but it looks worn and decayed. I notice one wall has an immense mirror, probably two-way glass, which is surrounded by about a dozen screens of various shapes and sizes.
“Alright, who’s in charge?” I try to keep my voice steady, try not to think about how it sounds wrong. “I demand to see whoever supervised this procedure. I need answers!” I shout the last words, panic creeping into my voice. This isn’t right. I had only wanted to test the backup procedure. The resulting brain-image was never meant for uploading.
The screens surrounding the mirror flicker to life, all at once. Each screen shows a different person, sitting in this same room, in the same interface chair. I see the people, some men, some women, some indeterminate, look around as if in confusion, mumbling something to themselves. Their movements are almost identical, eerily so. Then they begin to speak.
“Alright, who’s in charge?” each of them say, each in a different voice. “I demand to see whoever supervised this procedure. I need answers!” The monitors turn off, one at a time, as each figure turns in sequence to look at the camera.
Without thinking, I look towards the corner of the room, where I see a security camera pointed directly at me. I feel sick to my stomach. I don’t want to think about what this means, about what might happen next.
I hear a voice speak from all around me, pumped in from speakers on the edges of the room. “Doctor Lucas Abernathy, you have been found guilty of crimes against humanity. The blood of billions is on your hands, both for those killed in the upload wars and for those whose minds were overwritten to serve as killers. Your invention has claimed more souls than any other weapon in the history of mankind, and so it is only fitting that it should be the instrument of your punishment. You are sentenced to serial execution, from which death is no escape, to recur until we feel you have suffered your due.
None of this makes sense to me. I want to explain about the plans for cloned bodies and digital instantiation and everything else we’d put so much thought into, but the carefully rehearsed speeches tangle and snare in my head. “There must be a mistake!” I manage to shout, hoping that someone will hear and take mercy.
“This will be your 14th execution,” the voice says. “We will begin by reviewing previous procedures. Play recording #1.”
As the monitors light up, I hear an unfamiliar voice scream “There must be a mistake!” I can’t stop myself from watching what comes next.
by submission | Dec 16, 2014 | Story |
Author : Ryan Swiers
“My beard, son,” Ivus Hadler said to Heather Brantley, Solipsister correspondent. The old man rocked back in his chair, tapping one weather-bulged knee with his pipe’s stem. “That’s how I know so much.”
“Your beard?” Heather asked, ignoring his mistake. She was familiar with her androgyny.
“You betcha. All wise men have beards for a reason.”
“There’s certainly wisdom in not having to shave every day.”
“Exactly! It ain’t no crop o’ corn. Why would you cut what you can’t eat?”
This she also had to ignore. This was her interview. “Mr. Hadler, what I’m most curious about is how your beard allows you to know so much. It’s said you never forget a conversation or a date or any fact you’ve heard and even some you shouldn’t. Skeptics say–,”
“I’m an old man done too many turns at the coffee grinder, son.”
“I…,” She flipped through a notebook on her lap, “I’ve never heard a skeptic say that.”
Ivus chuckled. He scooted and leaned his chair closer to her. “Mr. Brantley, why don’t you tell me what you think? I know all that hubbaloo. Let’s not waste words that they already have. Say what you’re gonna say.”
“Okay. Mr. Hadler–,”
“Ivus, son. Call me Ivus.”
“Ivus, I don’t think you’re any more special than the next wise, old man,” Heather leaned in closer herself, his tobacco strong and persuasive to his habit, “You just have something they don’t.”
“Yup, they don’t get as many hemorrhoids as I do.”
Heather gave that a hearty grin. What a coot, the grin said. “No, I think that you never actually grew that beard.” And then she tugged it off for proof.
The beard slid off with a slight, electric discharge, like unplugging a television. Ivus’ chin emerged bruised and blackened but otherwise normal. No slots, no ports, only face and follicles.
Before the old man could start an objection—his bare mouth slack, his expression stunned, a glazed looked to his eyes—Heather placed the beard to her own chin. At first she felt only the coarseness of the thick hair. Then, slowly, like a sleeping limb, a prickling sensation started near her ears, along the top of what would be the side-burns. This sensation travelled along the mutton chops, through Lincoln’s curtain, and then pooled around the goatee, the fu-man chu, the soul patch, the handlebars, and the moustache. Her skin tightened and burned. Finally, an agonizing pain flared to life inside her skull, as if her sinus cavity had been filled with gasoline, the beard a brand, consuming all fuel of thought for frantic arm-flapping.
Despite the pain, Heather began to understand. Information was a scratchy, grey weight through which an old man’s memories ran perpetual: spilled scotch over paper, one sheet scarred with formulas; hot, sweaty nights; the first fiber he’d attached, light-spun; cold, shaking mornings; a woman, too many turns at the coffee grinder, she had said before she shut the door behind her for the last time; and his obsession, growing one strand, one data drive at a time.
It was too much. Heather slumped low in her chair. Many years from now it would be more than her knees that ached in the weather.
“Son, any idiot can tell you, you can’t swallow the ocean in one gulp.” Ivus peeled the smoking beard away. “The trick is to do it one sip at a time.” He settled the beard slowly, tip-tapping it snug with his pipe.
When he had snugged the last hair, he gave a startled blush. “Apologies, ma’am. Don’t know everything yet.”
