by submission | Jan 10, 2012 | Story |
Author : George S. Walker
Before the EMP went off, the sky over Stonehenge had been aflitter with fairies scattering pixie dust.
Agent Jack Bishop pulled off his mirrorshades as tourists around him tried to blink away the afterimage of the electromagnetic flash.
“Mummy,” said a little girl, “the fairies are gone.”
“They’ll be back, Love.”
No, thought Jack, they won’t. His days of swatting fairies with rolled-up newspapers were over. Surreptitiously, he looked down at the remote in his hand. After triggering the EMP device, it was dead, like every electronic device for miles. People were vainly fingering their phones, checking the earbuds on their iPods. An excited swell of conversation replaced the electronic void.
Whistling, Jack strode down the road away from the standing stones, passing frustrated drivers behind the wheels of stalled cars. He was already dreaming about spending his mission bonus. If Queen Camilla and Charles realized what the CIA had done here today, they’d be Royally pissed. But the British military-industrial complex would thank him.
In a meadow, he saw two little boys in the middle of a fairy ring, mushrooms forming a circle around them. They were searching desperately through the grass and clapping to bring back the fairies.
He shouted, “Man up!”
They looked at him, startled.
“Go home and play Black Ops or something!”
Not in a home near here, of course, for he’d fried their Xboxes.
As he continued along the road, a driver stepped out of his Mini and waved to him. “What happened at the Stones, mate?”
“Fireworks. Having car problems?”
The man nodded. “I hope some brownies come along soon to fix it.”
Don’t hold your breath, thought Jack.
The fairies, brownies and sprites were a plague on the world’s economy. Ever since the web ads proclaiming, “Click if you believe,” fairy sightings had multiplied, starting at Stonehenge. This was the nexus, the portal between the real electronic world and the mushy green fantasy one. As the Director said, “The bucks stopped here.”
When Jack checked into his hotel, the clerk apologized for the power and phone outage. “I’m sure they’ll have it fixed by nightfall, sir.”
They didn’t. When Jack went to bed, the only light was moonlight.
But he awoke the next morning to the normal rumble of traffic outside. Sunlight leaked through the curtains. He was about to turn on the television to check if Wall Street was celebrating, when he remembered: the EMP had fried the TV.
Then he noticed a flicker of motion above the dresser. He saw his dead iPhone on top of it. But he distinctly remembered tossing it in the wastebasket last night. The back cover had been removed, the circuit board exposed. Next to it, an incredibly tiny soldering iron was plugged into an acorn.
The phone rang. Jack picked it up gingerly.
“They’re back,” said the Director.
by submission | Jan 8, 2012 | Story |
Author : Z. J. Woods
Crowley said, “You sure you wanna do this?”
I brushed at the front of the faded jumpsuit. Nothing on it, of course. Nervous habit.
He took a long drag from his cigarette, sighed the smoke out. “Well,” he said. Expecting me to fill the silence. With what?
“Dammit, Crowl,” I said eventually. “Just do it. You won’t be back this way for … what? Six, seven years?”
“Seven on the inside,” he said. “Really can’t say.”
“I can’t wait that long.” Pictures of my broke-down apartment tumbled through my head. Leaky ceiling, peeling wallpaper, the works. Anything you can think of to make a home uncomfortable, that place had it. That whole damned world had it. “Do the thing before I change my mind.”
“Ain’t nothing much better out there,” he said.
“We gonna sit here all day?”
He shrugged, ground the cigarette into an ashtray that pulled out of the front console. Then he held the bike handle-looking thing with one hand and flipped switches with the other. “Ain’t too far off now. Look.”
The black mass blotted out the stars ahead. Space serpent, as Crowley had promised. Only they go fast enough to make jumping between the settlements possible. And only they know where they’re headed.
“The fuck do you plan to wrangle that thing?” I had to ask. “Can’t hardly see it.”
He tapped on a screen above the bike handle. The serpent squirmed, an orange blob
in green space. “Besides,” he added, “the harpoon knows its business better than I do. Nothing to worry about.”
When the ship knows more than its pilot, well, let’s just say it’s a hell of a universe we live in.
“Alright now, watch this.” Crowley did something with the bike handle, and the harpoon roared out faster than the old tug it came from could ever hope to go. Took about twenty, thirty minutes to hook the serpent. When I tell you I could hear my heart beat the whole time, wondering if it’d work at all or if Crowley was just a crazy bastard like he’d always been, God knows I’m not exaggerating.
I can’t say Crowley isn’t crazy, now, and he’s sure a bastard, but one thing he isn’t is a liar. Pain kicked the serpent into action. The line behind the harpoon pulled tight. Space disappeared.
Seven years. On the inside.
by submission | Jan 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Creak.
Edwin stopped his writing stylus. The screen pulsated waiting for the next letter.
Silence.
Once more, he began gliding the stylus, writing his letters with meticulous care. Edwin did not know why this was necessary when thoughts could produce the same effect on the screen, but his father had told him to do it. So he wrote.
Creak.
He stopped. Would the door open? Would he see his father? He sat, waited, and wrote. How long had he been waiting for his father’s return?
Creak.
The door opened, and his android approached him.
“Your father said to go to bed.” The metallic voice expressed nothing beyond the words.
“Is he home?” Edwin did not expect an answer, but he had to ask.
“Your father said to go to bed.”
“All right, I’m coming.” Edwin placed his stylus in its holder and turned off the screen.
Edwin and his companion moved down the dull metallic hallway and into Edwin’s bedroom. The android prepared him for sleep, and helped Edwin lie down on his smooth bed.
After a few minutes, Edwin’s father arrived accompanied by a woman. They stood together looking down at Edwin. “Yes, I think we’ve found an answer to the problem.” He held Edwin’s lighted screen in his hands:
“…Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh I am tired of writing letters Ii Jj Kk Ll…”
“Edwin has self-awareness.”
Sleeping yet not asleep, Edwin felt his father touch his hand, and the warmth spread up his arm. He heard them both leave the room.
His father’s words hung in the air behind them.
“We’ll add self-warming with the next one. We’ll name him Fred.”
Edwin touched one hand to the other. Cold. He blinked his eyes.
“Father?”
by submission | Jan 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Shaun.K.Adams
South of his lofty position in Tempest stations observation tower, Kane De Souza observed a vast cyclonic column of dust drifting across the Syria Planum. He marvelled at its frenetic energy as it tracked slowly across the highest plateau elevations on the Tharsis bulge, unleashing a dazzling light show of dry lightning stabbing at the Martian landscape. It reminded De Souza of a crazy monster, railing at the world, full of spite and fury. A wild and unpredictable thing, spitting and cursing at its environment as it headed out into the plains east of Arsia Mons.
During the eleven months that Tempest station had been operational, De Souza had witnessed many such dust storms, so far none of them had hit the small human outpost head on. Some aberrant part of him felt disappointed that this was the case. Although he was almost entirely certain that the station could withstand such an assault without so much as a scratch, it would be interesting to test its mettle so to speak. It might also alleviate some of the crushing boredom of the last eleven months here on Mars.
The steady clank of a centrifugal lock opening a hatchway cover and footsteps on the spiral staircase below him meant De Sousa was about to have company. As the sounds of laboured breathing rose towards his ears, he continued to stare after the receding dust storm through the 360-degree Armorglas viewing plate, only turning away when a head appeared above the circular Nano tube platform on which he stood.
“What brings you up here, Dorothy? You look terrible by the way.”
De Sousa grinned as his visitor sat down heavily on the top step, flipping him the bird with her free hand as she caught her breath back. Dorothy unzipped the top of her standard issue padded green coveralls and pulled out a bottle and two plastic cups.
“I came to wish you a merry Christmas you unsociable bastard.”
She cracked open the screw top on the bottle of Glayva and poured the amber liquid.
“Best liqueur in the world.” She said, offering a cup to, De Sousa.
“We aren’t in the world this came from, in case you had forgotten,” he said taking the proffered drink.
“Lighten up, Kane. It’s Christmas day. We all have to make the best of this situation.”
De Sousa took a sip of the liqueur, savoured the taste and sat down next to his companion.
“Sorry, Dotty, how are your lungs holding up?”
“Tight, after climbing those stairs, sunshine. Second stage remission, the new meds from Phobos base are kicking its arse.”
De Sousa ran his finger over the hazard rail at the top of the stairway then held it up to his eyes for examination. A fine red powder adhered to his fingertip. The ‘it’, Dorothy Penhaligon referred to was a condition known as ‘Red Lung,’ the first cases of it had begun to show up among the thirty members of Tempest stations crew less than a week after the orbiting Gravity Tractor had lowered the entire station to the surface of Mars.
“The Providence just left Earth orbit to re supply us, Kane. With her new generation Ion drive she will be here in less than three months, the quarantine will have ended by then. And I have more good news too.”
Dorothy reached over and took Kane’s hand in hers, wiping away the red stain with her thumb.
“The doc, says I am pregnant, my love. Our child will be the first Native Martian.”
by submission | Jan 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Erin Cole
Dawn fractures through the glades of the development. Solar-paneled rooftops refract the cadmium light of sun and men prepare for their busy days, hefting briefcase to hybrid. Jen-6 wakes and rises erect.
Inside a petite helmet, embedded with black silks, is a cellular mass of encrypted energy. She snaps it into her eco-friendly skull.
There is a crackle of voltage, irregular in function, but robot mommy doesn’t report. To do so would expose dysfunction.
Dysfunction leads to the gooey darkness. Jen-6 reboots. There is no dysfunction in her world today’she is robot mommy.
Downstairs, sweet pigtail blue-eyes yawns for a bowl of muesli.
“I want a waffle, plain, cut up with syrup!” shouts the little tyke.
The glum girl in black, doesn’t respond. This presents no dilemma for Jen-6. Her upgrades included telepathic features: she wants the usual oatmeal, not too hot, or cold, stirred thick as lentil soup. With technology behind her stride, she can do anything today. She is robot mommy.
A trip to the downtown pergolas throws Jen-6 into the sharp points of shifty stares. The townsfolk are unwelcome to the new developments in robotic child rearing.
“She’s one of the new androids.”
“Who would ever trust their kids to a machine?”
“Of course they would design her after Barbie.”
Jen-6 strides past them, aloof, yet in the void of her makeup, she wishes to be one of them, to feel the heat of real neurotransmitters.
Jen-6 pays for a bundle of bread and steers away from hostile minds. Further into the arms of the city, dust from construction billows into the clefts of her sleek frame. She activates ionic cleansing agents, but her power pack has only two bars left. It is a long walk to the park and rain complicates her journey further.
Returning home, her leg casings crack and flake into metallic scales. Saline-drenched skies have eroded her modules. She slumps into a chair, stuttering incoherent terminology.
“Father, robot mommy is crashing.”
Father kneels beside her. “Jen-6? Can you reboot?”
She is unable to restart. Irises that were once silver-blue are now the shade of an eclipsed moon. Father hangs up the phone; his pleas ignored by The System. A diamond-shaped pack of guards march up the drive and heave Jen-6 into the back of a utility vehicle. Father makes a cross at his heart, hoping for another, maybe a red-haired one next time.
Thick gelatinous water rouses Jen-6 from an ashen-colored sleep. She is drifting, sinking. Quicksilver spores adhere to her body, replenishing synthetic carbon-based layers of tissue. She sways sideways, past the beams of orange-filtered lighting, down into the gooey darkness. A glitch in her system fires, a crackle, and for one diminutive moment, Jen-6 is scared, angry…human.
“Cer…eal…waffle…plain…, glum gir…oatmeal…lent…soup”
***
Dawn fractures through the oaks of the countryside. Shingled rooftops smoke from heated dew, and men ready for their busy days, steering tractor to field. Jen-7 wakes and rises erect. She is the newest protocol, rigorously tested to face every obstacle to date. She snaps a petite helmet, embedded with golden silks, into her eco-friendly skull.
Downstairs, a brown-eyed, wobbling babe wants eggs scrambled, toast with berry jam, and juice in his favorite cartoon cup. Little baby twins cry for a warm bottle of immunization-enhanced, homogenized milk.
A small hiccup in Jen-7’s system flashes a vision behind the optic sheath of her lids: a line of children at the downtown pergolas and a man in a tailored suit. Jen-7 computes the error and reboots. There will be no dysfunction in her world today. She is robot mommy.
