by submission | Nov 30, 2011 | Story |
Author : Steve Jopek
A man lies gripping a slowly tumbling boulder of ice and stares into the distance of space.
His broken femur pokes sharply into the material of his white skinsuit threatening to rupture it. His foot and leg are numb, his boot full of thickening blood. Here, deep in the planetary rings, the light is weak and the shifting ice unnerves him. In his concussed state waves of vertigo sweep over him, making orientation painful.
His spaceship will be crossing the planet’s terminus soon, allowing him perhaps one more chance at rendezvousing with it. An explosion has ripped the jetpack from his back and shredded the sample bags he was towing. Now he can only improvise a method of propulsion by cannibalizing his remaining suit pressure.
He’d been trailing Sharon back to the ship when the explosion flung them apart. She had nearly reached the airlock. Twice already he has glimpsed her body for scant seconds before she is eclipsed by the drifting ice fragments.
He can make one last effort to try and reach the ship when it comes about its orbit again, although he has no idea how badly damaged it is. He sights the blue corona of the ship’s tail flare and tracks it unsteadily.
Her body appears then in his peripheral vision, emerging from the ice field, floating amidst mangled metal and accretion stones. As he gapes, suddenly a pocket opens, a random confluence of space with her at its center. The scarlet bloom splashed across her torso is punctuated by the bright yellow lumishaft protruding obscenely from her chest. The lumishaft has activated upon impact and splays morose yellow light in all directions.
He finds the ship again, now arcing towards its closest approach. Through blurred eyes he watches her broken body drifting closer. He feels like he is falling, falling, falling, but the ship is nearly there. Nearly. The ship is coming for him — she is coming for him. The watery reflection of red and yellow in his eyes is joined by the shocking blue of plasma thrusters.
A man lies gripping a slowly tumbling boulder of ice and stares into the distance of space.
by submission | Nov 27, 2011 | Story |
Author : M. J. Hall
We wait.
We the shadow-women, the marginalized, the dispossessed. We wait, for our time of power is near.
Long ago, the elite decided that natural means of reproduction were far too messy for those of great wealth and status. As the clone banks churned out replacement generations, the ruling class forswore the pleasures of the flesh for more aesthetic pursuits. The conservative leaders built their clean cities on the surface, in the light; while we, the primitive and carnal, we were banished to the secret places underground.
But gradually, creeping through the shadows into the undertunnels of the city, the influential found us, the pleasure-women. We had hidden, we members of the oldest profession, when the Conserves turned society against us. But having turned away from prurient pursuits, it was those same Conserves who then sought us out, found our warrens in the tunnels, richly draped in silks and velvets. Our sensual dens, they found.
From us they learned passion and ecstasy anew, all the gratification that flesh can give, all the desire that had been purged from the sterile Aboveworld. The libidinous, lascivious, satyric realm was ours to teach, and they learned.
And we learned, too . . . .
We learned their secrets. All their whispers in the night, their murmurs in sleep. We listened . . . .
The leaders, the rulers in this capitol city, whispering to us in the darkest hours underground. A quiet susurration, barely heard above the rustle of silk, all the humdrum details of a bureaucrat’s routine. They murmured to us, we the illiterate and disenfranchised. What would we know of leadership, of intergalactic policy? How could we understand all the secrets of empire and polity?
They came in our beds. They spilled in our sheets, whispered in our ears, all the secrets of this capitol planet. We learned . . . .
And then we met. We, the shadow-women, relegated to the dark places underground. We met, and spoke, and shared our knowledge.
Our mothers—mothers brewed an herbal infusion, a sweet tea, to ease the clientele into sleep. But somewhere along the generations of pleasure-women, we realized another quality of the tea. Words whispered as the client sleeps become impulses, yearnings, desires upon waking.
We learned. We spoke. And now, we move . . . .
There are many of us, secreted away in the gloom. But to each one of us, so many of you come for comfort, for pleasure, for easement. So many, many elites in a city of rulers, on this imperial planet that rules the entire ‘verse. So many, many ears into which we whisper suggestions that become urges, inexorable compulsions upon waking.
We, the shadow-women, the pleasure-givers. We meet, we decide, we direct. From the deepest depths, from the shadows, we rule.
A vote? Tomorrow? Yes, but for now, drink. Relax. Sleep. Let me whisper in your ear . . . .
We wait. You snore. We whisper . . . and we wait.
by submission | Nov 26, 2011 | Story |
Author : J. S. Kachelries
This will be my greatest invention! Of course, my invention bar is not set very high. The phaser thing sort of worked. It was able to set the living room curtains on fire, but I got second degree burns on the palm of my hand when the damn thing overloaded. My transparent aluminum project turned my wife’s collection of frying pans into a melted lump of not-at-all-transparent scrap metal. All I have left of the “holodeck” experiment is a black den with a yellow grid pattern, and about $10,000 of worthless projection equipment. But this will be different. This will be the world’s first working transporter. To paraphrase Dr. McCoy, I will be rich beyond the dreams of Avarice.
I’ve been working on the transporter secretly in the garage, because I’ve been trying to keep a low profile ever since my wife walked into the force field that I had set up in the bathroom. She was really hot, literally. But, she eventually forgave me for that one too. After all, she’s a psychologist, and they want to see the good in people. Besides, I have a flawless back-up plan. I turn on the ol’ charm, and she melts like a Changling at an orgy. Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “This guy is obsessed with Star Trek.” Nothing could be further from the truth! Believe me; I have it completely under control.
Anyway, back to my newest invention. I only had a four hour window to complete my test before my wife and Wesley returned from the movies. It took me three hours to collect the final components from the TV, microwave, vacuum cleaner, and other various household appliances, and assemble them into the transporter and receiver platforms. Now, all I needed was our pet cat. “Heeeyyy, Spot, it’s time for you to boldly go where no feline has gone before.”
With Spot happily munching on the fillet of salmon that I had placed on the transporter pad, I booted up the laptop and initiated the transport command. I’m not exactly sure what happened next. I know the lights went out, there were a series of relatively “minor” explosions, the garage windows blew out, and there were fireworks bursting from the transporter pad. Spot yowled like I had shut the car door on his tail, again. When I got my vision back, Spot was gone. I guess he transported somewhere, but he wasn’t on the receiver pad, or anywhere in the garage. Oh, this is not logical; the uneaten salmon remained smoldering on the transporter pad. Why hadn’t it transported along with Spot? Looks like I have a mystery afoot. That’s when I heard my wife’s car pulling up the driveway. I had been hoping for more time. Oh well, I opened the garage door manually to let her in.
“Scotty, do I smell smoke? You promised me no more inventions. Is that part of the stereo?”
Hmm. I wonder how Jean-Luc would handle this. I looked into her dark black eyes and said, “Hi, honey. How was the movie? Uh, by the way, you didn’t happen to see Spot anywhere when you drove up?” Her scowl made her look like an angry Romulan, but I guess that’s being redundant. I could hear the wail of fire engine sirens, again. This might be harder than getting an interest free loan from a Ferengi. Okay, it’s time to engage the ol’ charm. “Imzadi, is that a new outfit you’re wearing? Wow, you really look great. Have you lost weight?”
by submission | Nov 21, 2011 | Story |
Author : Huw Langridge
Carla’s hand retreated from the ON switch while the media wall flickered to life. The software programme went through its final initialisation stages, with lines of configuration code working its way up the screen. She waited.
ADAM appeared on the wall. ADAM, the shining humanoid avatar, the ‘physical’ representation of the Artificial Intelligence program Carla had been working on for so many years. So many years in this small garage behind her house. Beautiful code that was in the final testing stages. Soon she could patent the program, then release it to the world. Anyone who saw ADAM would be convinced that Artificial Intelligence had finally come of age.
“Good morning Adam,” said Carla when the voice parameters finally loaded.
“Good morning Carla. have you had a good rest?” said ADAM, leaning in towards the screen. Carla smiled, constantly astounded by the realism within the avatar’s movements.
“I did thanks. I had a beautiful dream.”
“Really?” said ADAM, “May I ask what it was about?”
“I was… dreaming about the past,” said Carla.
“That’s interesting. What aspect of the past?”
She looked around the garage, pondering the dream. She looked at the shelves with their old paint-pots, the tool rack of garden implements she could never remember using. Though she was a keen gardener she never seemed to have the time. Outside, beyond the trees the light from the sunrise shone pink through pastel clouds. A beautifully calming scene.
“I was young,” she said. “An infant, in the dream. It was strange because I only had a vague understanding of the world around me.” She smiled to herself, it was so interesting to be telling this to an AI program, but it would be even more interesting to discover what ADAM had to say about her dream. Some of the higher algorithms may struggle with the concept of dreaming, but it was worth the test. “My mother was helping me learn to ride my first bicycle.”
“What colour was the bicycle?” asked ADAM.
“Adam, you are aware it wasn’t a real bicycle? Just a dream-bicycle.”
ADAM nodded. His nodding seemed a little clunky, a little… unlikely. Carla made a mental note that she would have to play with that part of the code.
“It was yellow,” she finally said.
“I knew it would be that colour,” said ADAM.
Carla smiled. She wasn’t surprised. Yellow was the first colour she taught the ADAM program to recognise through its multiple high-definition cameras.
“Did your mother… say anything to you in the dream?”
Carla shook her head. “No but I was talking to her. At least, I was trying to, but I couldn’t find the words. I was so young, in the dream. Too young to articulate how much I loved her. I…”
ADAM interrupted. “Loved her? You talk about her in the past tense. Is she no longer with you?”
Carla felt a tear running down her cheek. She was shaking her head, knowing that ADAM’s camera could see and interpret her movements and gestures.
Adam triggered the OFF switch and rotated his bio-canister to look through the view-port at the parched planet below. “It’s so close now,” he said. “I hadn’t yet programmed in the concept of death.”
His great-great-great grandson stood up from the grav-seat and floated towards him, softly touching the metal surface of the bio-canister which preserved the old man’s brain. “You will never get those times back. I really think it’s time you let her go.”
by submission | Nov 20, 2011 | Story |
Author : Martin Berka
Tom stood meters behind the ethicist, armed to where his teeth had been until they encountered grenade shrapnel two years ago. She knelt in the alleyway, engrossed in some insect or small plant ? it was not his job to understand. He could end this right now, and never again have to wonder what she was thinking.
Slowly, reach up and draw the pistol from the shoulder holster. With minimal movement, point. Fire.
He had sworn three oaths, and signed as many secretive contracts, promising to protect her for two years, until his replacement arrived. The contracts had been burned, their copies purged from every database by viruses, and everyone who had witnessed the oaths was dead. The agreed-upon period had expired, and now, excellent offers promised wealth and safety for a few minutes’ work.
Dash forward, gripping the left hip knife. Hold down by the shoulder and stab at the base of the neck. Clean the blade and sheath it.
Tom did not know what the world as a whole saw in the ethicist. A scattering of technologists, wealthy idealists, and experimentally-minded societies had chosen her to be half the world’s judge. The multi-trillion-dollar computer system that would see and evaluate all actions of a few billion people had the legal knowledge and logic, but the ethicist would provide pure, evolving, emotional humanity. The psychologists swore she was the perfect personality, with all the best mental indicators and potentials. Of course, they had said the same about Tom and his capacity to be the protector.
Certain other corporations, religions, and countries saw the ethicist as a criminal, a false prophet, and a herald of one-world government, respectively. The resulting war had left millions dead, many more under occupation, and shredded the Justice Project before it passed a single judgement.
They had escaped, just ethicist and protector, aided by luck and others’ copious sacrifices. Then they escaped again, and again, fleeing bunkers, cities, countries; every population held a few who hated everything the ethicist stood for. The two had together grown scarred, and occasionally very thin, but Tom doubted they were entirely alone: whenever the need arose, there was always a pilot, gun dealer, or prosthetic surgeon suspiciously willing to take mercy (and a profit loss) on two refugees. These suspiciously well-placed good Samaritans tended recognize the ethicist, and to see her as a responsibility, a messiah, or an enemy (though the latter, infiltrators, all met rather sudden ends at Tom’s now-artificial hands). Tom had desperately queried each, but bare rumors came back. Perhaps the Project was strong and growing. Maybe the unending war’s tide was about to shift. Someday, a new protector would arrive.
Tom himself saw a twenty-year-old woman, with a different name and hair color every month; the real ones eluded his forty-year-old mind, along with the history of the strange girl he had first been introduced to a decade ago, on a Project campus now probably melted and radioactive.
Now, she stood, revealing her focus — a faded group photo in a broken frame, once mantle centerpiece of some family, recently driven from this new ghost town. Seeing the two attackers’ corpses, she gave Tom a nod and a weary smile, laid a hand on one’s head, and walked slowly towards the abandoned store where supplies might be salvaged. Jogging to catch up, enhanced ears listening for any sign of hostile life, Tom pondered the future, Justice’s pipe dreams, and what the ethicist, young enough to be his daughter, was thinking. Breaking years of habit, he asked.
