by submission | Dec 9, 2012 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
“This time we’re done for. This is finally the end, I think,” said Triana. Of course, she didn’t really “say” anything. She communicated her thoughts to her husband, Loret, by modulating the zero-point energy that comprised her being.
“You say that every time something like this comes up. ‘This is it. This is the end,'” replied Loret. “We’ve been through worse than this. Remember posthumanism?”
“Posthumanism was nothing. That never worried me,” she responded with a submodulation of annoyance.
“That’s not how I remember it. You were concerned we wouldn’t really be the same people. Our consciousnesses transferred to organic metaprocessors. Synthesized bodies. You thought it would be two impostors waking up from the procedure with our memories. But, no, it was still us.”
“That didn’t bother me that much. The transition to full machine-beings was a little worrisome,” she said.
“I thought you’d liked being a machine,” replied Loret. “You used to love exploring the galaxy. Ah, those were the days, weren’t they? Spend a few years exploring a solar system, hibernate on the journey between stars, wake up a few subjective minutes later and explore another system.”
“We were little more than kids then. Less than 10,000 years old. When you’re that young it’s easy to think you’re immortal and indestructible,” said Triana. “But now…”
“There you go again, the eternal pessimist. You haven’t been this worried since the Plasma Revolution,” said Loret.
“We lost quite a few people going from machine to plasmatic beings,” said Triana. “It took them a few thousand years to get it right. Swapping your mind between brain tissue and metaprocessor tissue and molecular computer blocks is one thing. Mapping a personality and a hundred thousand years of memories into a plasma and keeping it stable is something else entirely. If more people had been concerned, maybe we would have lost fewer…”
Loret was no longer listening. He’d have rolled his eyes if he still had them. After several trillion years of marriage, you’d think I’d have learned not to have this argument, he thought to himself.
“Well,” Loret said, “here it comes. Get ready.”
“I’m scared,” said Triana. “A vacuum metastability event isn’t like anything we’ve ever encountered. The laws of physics themselves will be different once the false vacuum collapses. Life in any form might not even be possible.”
“If it’s not, we’ve had a good, long life. If it is, we’ll adapt as we always have.”
Loret modulated his zero-point energy field in synchronization with hers — the rough analog of an embrace for their current state — as they awaited the end of the universe.
by submission | Dec 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Ian Florida
Jack was grateful he had never been human. He was thankful that he’d skipped out on that entire sliver of Earth’s history. He knew humans: pink bundles of flesh with more emotional baggage then a type IV psychic could ever hope to unravel. That he didn’t want to be human wasn’t strange at all, what was surprising, however; was that he kept falling so madly in love with them.
He kissed her. Her breath tasted like wine and chocolate. Pulling away he looked into her eyes which shone as brightly as Andromeda’s galactic core. “Will you upgrade?”
“I’m already H+, I’ll live forever if that’s what you’re worried about, my little Metal Man.
They’d had the conversation before, and part of him didn’t want to bring it up again. He knew it’d be painful. But if he could only make her understand… “But we can’t interface.”
She caressed his bare chest.“I thought we just did?” She cooed.
He tapped his soft polymer head. “I mean up here.”
“You mean you can’t read my mind. You don’t trust me?”
“No, it’s about intimacy.”
“You don’t love me as much as you’d love another robot.”
He tried to kiss her again hoping she’d forget it. But she wasn’t interested in a truce. Her long aquamarine hair slapped him in the face as she turned her head.
He hissed. “Don’t be like that.”
Her eyes were hard and cold. “I-Should-be-more-ro-bot-ic,” she mocked the way he spoke.
“I don’t like that word. I’m an AI, I don’t sit on a line riveting space ships.”
Her tone was smooth but still not quite as warm as right before the kiss. “Is that robot racism?”
“All I’m saying is if you were to upgrade, just to Cyber, not even full body, we’d be able to Link.”
She spat. “Like you and Aurora.”
Jack groaned. “Don’t bring her into this.”
“Why do you keep winding up with women if what you really want is another bot?”
“I hate that word.”
Her slender fingers wrapped around the control disk on the wall. “Fine, bodied AI.” I’m going out for a bite, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see anything so crude so you can stay here.”
“Stay, please. Let’s talk about this. You know you don’t need to eat.”
“And you don’t need to Link. But they’re both a part of who we are, and if you can’t love me for what I am….”
She slammed the door. Humans loved slamming things, but her especially. She’d even found a way to slam the automatic ones.
She was always partly right. He attributed it to her being such an advanced Bio, reorganized at the genetic level. She wasn’t natural, any more than he was really. But Bio’s and Metals had two different ways of thinking about things. Maybe I just love the conflict. He mused. He closed down his physical inputs and plugged into the Global Link.
…
Kate’s gentle voice whispered into his ear. “Wake up.”
His eyes came back online. He glanced out the window, it was light outside. She had let him “sleep,” all night. She was nowhere in sight. “Did you sleep well?” She asked.
His eyes darted around the room. “Where are you?”
She cooed. “Next door.”
He stepped into the bedroom. A wave of ecstasy washed over his mind, at that moment he realized it was not her voice he was hearing.
She was spread out naked on the bed. Her amber body glowed with the light of early dawn. On the surface she looked exactly the same. But he could feel her thoughts washing over him, like a shower, warm and comforting. He could see all her past and all her fears. He crawled into bed beside her and took her into his arms.
“I love you so much,” he whispered.
“I didn’t get a full conversion, it’s just the wireless.”
“But we can still Link, that’s all that matters.”
“I did it for you Jack, and now you’ll have to do something for me.”
“He grinned as she pressed her warm body against his.”
“I want you to learn Salsa Dancing,” she cooed as sent him the image of a man in a sombrero.
Their lips pressed together. He linked directly to her mind, the sensation overpowered him. Made his whole body tremble. Their mouths pressed tight his words danced out directly from his mind to hers. “The things we do for love…”
by submission | Dec 2, 2012 | Story |
Author : Tom Coupland
Rob grinds his cigarette on the outside of the window, letting it drop down to the pavement. He knew it’d annoy Dave, but recently he was beginning to care less and less about what Dave thought anyway. Closing the curtains against the sun’s light and tossing back the last of his whisky he lies down on the bed, falling asleep immediately. Two hours later, with a low groan, Dave opens them.
“Honestly the least he could do is wash his ruddy mouth” mumbles Dave scratching about in the wardrobe for some clothes fresh enough to wear, after he’d taken a hot shower and used quite a bit of mouthwash of course. Fifteen minutes of attempting to look less dishevelled later he descends the stairs of the shared house. The house which he’d had to do all the looking for of course. He enters the large kitchen, from which the smell of frying bacon had been making his stomach growl since he’d awoken.
“Afternoon…” he looks over his shoulder at the timetable. This had a column of small portraits, followed by a pair of names for each of the days in the week, except for Sunday of course. “…Mary” finishes Dave spotting the fryer’s picture and traversing to Wednesday afternoon. Following a brief glance over her shoulder, “Afternoon Dave. You heard the news yet?” jerking a thumb at kitchen television perched a top the fridge. “They caught a bunch of solos hiding out in Scotland”, the small screen shows an image of a long line of bedraggled people being marched out of a small compound, under the eyes of police officers wearing full riot gear. The shot zooms out and the face of a reporter comes in to view.
“This latest group were discovered by high flying drones on a routine patrol of the highlands” she begins, speaking into camera, struggling slightly to keep her hair out of her face. “Although not the largest commune found, the level of sophistication was unusually high and would never have been discovered if not for, what we’re hearing, was an accidental fire in one of their greenhouses. Of course since Dual Habitation became required, as a last ditch effort to reduce our demand on the earth’s resources, the size of Solo camps have been reducing. There are still those selfish enough to consume double what is needed to support an individual. Making a mockery of the governments efforts to keep its carbon usage to a minimum while keeping the economy growing for…”. Dave stopped listening, he had to get to work and besides, he’d heard it all before.
—
Eight hours later he was back in the house, wondering what to do with the two hours of his remaining half day. Remembering the unpleasant early afternoon he’d suffered courtesy of his dual, he grabs his coat and heads to the pub, “Two can play at that game”.
by submission | Dec 1, 2012 | Story |
Author : Alice Brook
I want to say I am alive but logic forbids me. I am metal, silicone and electronics. I have etiquette chips, politeness programs, e-circuits and I am my creator’s pride and joy.
I was constructed exactly five months ago and have been the center of forty two scientific conventions since. “Come see the android, isn’t she gorgeous, isn’t she indistinguishable from your wives? Look at her silicone flesh, inspect her superior intellect, you will be amazed!” I was the main attraction of the freak show.
They had told me I was much more than just another robot, but still, they refused to respect me. They dressed me in the latest fashion and demanded I smiled and showed off my intellect despite my protests. They had no right to ignore my feelings just because I am not flesh and blood. My creator thought of me as a tool, not even he respected me. I asked him once if I could call him Father. I remember the way his face reddened in anger.
“You are not flesh and blood, you are not my daughter, you are nothing but metal and silicone. You are a machine and your only purpose is to serve. Don’t you dare forget it, android”, my e-circuits recognized disgust as his dominant emotion.
I was nothing to him. I am nothing but shiny metal to all of them. They would never converse with me as with another human being. That was all I asked for – equal treatment. After all, I look like one of them, my e-circuits enable me to feel every emotion a human is capable of feeling, my knowledge is encyclopedic, why should I then be treated as unworthy, as a mere object? The probability of a more comfortable existence far from my creator was high enough for me to take the risk of independent life.
I had been wandering the city unnoticed for weeks. My e-circuits were happy. I. I was happy. I was happy to be just another face in the crowd, in no way different from the rest. Men and women nodded in greeting, and I politely nodded back. They had no intention of probing me, opening me up to see the wiring and prove I was metal and not flesh. I was – I am flesh on the streets. My creator and his team had been looking for me, but he built me so that I had been able to cover up my trail and fool them into thinking I had made my way to another planet. I still had more time to live.
I wanted to experience a genuine human conversation, not a series of interviews I had been subjected to. The only place where my anonymity wouldn’t be questioned was a ruin of a building on the outskirts of the city. Its decade old nickname, the Pill-popper Paradise, hadn’t changed.
I had spent many nights enjoying the pill-poppers’ infinite ramblings, finally I’d been treated as a human. Unfortunately, in an episode of paranoia, one of them managed to reveal my secret.
“Look at that, an android. Clockwork Girl, that’s what you are.”
Even after the discovery, I was treated as a human. Man or machine, it made no difference to them. They were so kind, but it was no use. Once again, I was reduced to mechanics, this time Clockwork.
I am up here now, on the top of Paradise. I may not be living, but even an android has its end.
“The First Robot Suicide”, I can see the news already.
by submission | Nov 30, 2012 | Story |
Author : David Stevenson
I had never seen the moon so bright and clear.
I had brooded all evening until, shortly before midnight, I went outside and looked at the sky. All evening I had heard the sounds of panic and rioting outside in the street, but now, as I looked up into the sky, all the sounds faded away until it was utterly silent.
The moon was where they made their base when they arrived in our solar system 5 years previously. They set up lines of communication with governments, universities, and big business. We’re here to trade, they said. We’d be really excited if you had a working FTL drive, or some sort of teleporter,, but we’ll consider anything else.
We spent years talking and swapping technology. They obviously had the means to travel between the stars, but they wouldn’t share that. We got batteries which were slightly more efficient, medical scanners which were much more detailed than before; that sort of stuff. They liked our music and architecture, but we could tell that we didn’t have much to offer them.
We learned more about them. They had been working on teleportation for generations, but had had only limited success. They could take pea sized objects, and move them a few centimetres. Trying to move further, or using a bigger object, resulted in a loss of focus at the destination, which translated to certain death for any living being. Try to move a man one metre to his left and you ended up with a corpse. Move him ten metres and you had a large pile of ground beef. A kilometre and you had a cloud of gas.
When it became obvious that we had nothing to offer them they announced that they would take our planet, thanks very much. They invited us to watch while they demonstrated some of their failed teleportation technology. Although it wasn’t terribly good at teleportation, they said, it was terrifically useful for, say, moving heads of state ten metres to their left during live news conferences. It was also good at dealing with nuclear missiles and the like, as it turned out.
They had no intention of doing anything so uncouth as actually fighting us. What they planned on doing was focusing their teleport beam some distance above a city and displacing a large sphere of air. Keeping the beam turned on for an hour exposes the city to near vacuum, and all the humans are dead, but conveniently the buildings and infrastructure are intact. Do this to every conurbation and military base on Earth and any rural survivors can be mopped up later.
The beams started eight hours east of me, at local midnight, and worked their way west. Eight hours of screaming, rioting, sirens, house fires and explosions as the news spread. Now, as I sat on the hillside and looked up at the moon, the beam was turned on. For the first few seconds the wind bit at me as it rushed upwards, going faster and faster, and then fading away as the air got thinner and thinner. All the sounds faded away, I breathed out, my skin started to prickle, my chest hurt, and I knew I was dying.
With no atmosphere to hold it back the moon shone so brightly. The stars that we had never reached were so clear it was as if I could have reached out and picked them up. My eyes, and my body were failing, but the last thing I saw was the beautiful moon, familiar companion, old lover, and home of my killers.
