by submission | Dec 11, 2013 | Story |
Author : Jonathan VanDyke
With a rush, the ground was beneath me. The blacktop was cold, wet, and unforgiving. I pulled my jacket close. I was sure I looked ridiculous. We’d comprised my outfit from old pictures of the times. Leather jacket with a sheep skin collar, flannel shirt, rugged jeans and brown leather boots. Cliché at best, but as long as I blended in, that was the important part. The cold nibbled at my cheeks. I took a deep breath. The oxygen flowed through my lungs freely and abundantly. The air was so fresh. The smell of pine from the nearby wood line behind the motel lingered in my nostrils. It reminded me of being a kid, although I wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps it’s because the air was so pure, almost innocent. It was absent of smog. Absent of the smell of motor oil and lubricated metal. Absent of the smell of blood and feces.
I pulled out a small strip of paper with the numbers 101 hastily scribbled onto it. The snowfall cast a halo around the parking lot’s street lights making each one look like an oil painting. At least, I thought so. I’d only seen a few of those in my lifetime. Room number 101. The light was on. Through the blinds I could see a woman sitting on the bed. Sad looking. Tired. Next to her laid a baby curled up and fast asleep. I stood there for a moment, in the silence of the cold. The baby wasn’t really responsible for what happened, not yet. He wasn’t capable of comprehending the horror, the atrocities he’d commit. Maybe he could change. I thought about choice, about free will and fate, things we’d all discussed for countless hours over and over again. For a moment, just a split second, I almost felt empathetic. Then I thought about the machines. He didn’t deserve a chance. He didn’t deserve a choice.
The pistol was already in my hand. I had come to terms with my intentions. I knocked. The door opened. My hand cupped the woman’s mouth and I pushed her back into a chair. The fear in her eyes struck me. Blue eyes. I had expected brown. She whimpered as I leaned in close.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered into her ear.
I stepped back into the cold to flee the scene. A noise a few doors down stopped me. A baby’s cry. A wave of anxiety raced down my spine. Despite the weather, I began to feel hot. My body temperature rose. I was sweating. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of paper. My hands were shaking as I tried to read it again. 101. I pulled it closer. My eyes scanned from left to right. In black ink there was a one, followed by a zero, and then I saw it. A faded angle. It wasn’t a one. It was a four. Room 104.
by submission | Dec 8, 2013 | Story |
Author : Dakota Brown
Silence.
The familiarity of it comforted her, but her mind was busy with preparation.
The lights had gone out in a moment, the fluorescent image of the room around her burned into her eyes. The radio had ceased the peppy tunes of bands long disbanded and commercials for products long forgotten. What remained was the towering clock perched against the wall near her bed… ticking… tocking.
Clockwork. In a way it was all like clockwork. She checked to see that the front door of her twelve by twelve room was locked, despite the fact that she had abandoned the idea of leaving it unlocked long ago. The process involved testing a series of bolt locks and iron bars covering the lone entrance/ exit, and though the security measures were constantly in place, she found that the check settled her mind. Next, the candles were lit. Fifteen candles scattered around the room somewhat resembled electricity, but with two now burned out and another thirteen near the end of their wicks, the room was far from its typical acceptable state. She would have to leave for some more candles when the lights came up. But for now, she fell to her bed gripping her father’s knife tightly and waited.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
At first it was tolerable because she could see the other apartments being illuminated as well through her now boarded up window. But one by one the candlelit rooms remained pitch black and neighbors she had once known had been whisked away.
Despite it all, the silence forced her mouth into a smile. It gave her purpose, it gave her fight. The dragging sounds and dull, wet thuds echoing in the hallway made her giggle and when a hollow voice would call “Please come with us” she had to bite her lip to keep herself from mocking the creature on the other side of her door.
She would wake in the morning to a prerecorded radio show she had heard many times before and wipe the drool of a pleasant night’s sleep from her jaw. She would turn the radio down and listen to the gentle pendulum of the clock while considering her next night.
Tick, tock.
It has been fun.
Tick, tock.
But there’s no one else left.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
I guess that makes me the winner of this little game.
Tick, tock.
Maybe tonight I’ll let them give me my prize.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
by submission | Dec 7, 2013 | Story |
Author : Willis Weatherford
“Mr. Lengua.” The man Nathan knew only as ‘the Agent’ paused a long moment in his crisp black suit before continuing. “Do you know why you’re here?”
“No. I don’t know where ‘here’ is, either. Nor who you are, where I am am, nor why,” Nathan Lengua said, and thought to himself “but I know you are feeling scared, old man”. The knowledge gave him a feeling of power and security.
The Agent’s carefully combed, purely white hair created a simple arc over the rim of his black glasses as his eyes scanned the file scrolling down the bifocal lens. As the Agent re-read the final page, Nathan felt the old man’s fear grow, and expand to include uncertainty. The Agent’s eyes flicked up to meet his own.
“Your location and my identity are classified from everyone without security clearance. That includes you. So, let’s focus. Tell me about Lexington.” The glasses pointed forward, the white hair glowed in the incandescent light, and the black suit remained perfect, but all Nathan needed to know, he could feel: the Agent’s hesitance and growing fear were as obvious to the detainee’s senses as the clothes were visible to his eyes.
Nathan thought back to Lexington, his most recent gig as a professional “Feeler”. Mr. Berg, a venture capitalist, hired him to be in the room “taking notes” as entrepreneurs pitched their ideas. Little did those budding businessmen know that the dark skinned, quiet clerk in the corner was taking notes on their every feeling, and would later reveal his findings to Berg in a private office.
“Well, Mr. Berg, I wouldn’t go for this one. When you asked him about his market research, he sounded confident but felt nervous. Judging by his resentment when you asked about his family, I’d say he has either a bad breakup or an illegitimate child in the recent past – of course that may be a flaw you are willing to overlook.”. Usually, Berg took his advice. And, judging by the growing profits, it was usually paying off. Nathan brought his thoughts back to the question at hand, and decided to keep up the facade. After all, the Agent couldn’t feel his nervousness.
“Lexington was my home for the past four months, my most recent job. I was working as a clerk for a venture capitalist. Your thugs nabbed me and brought me to wherever ‘here’ is. Presumably, you know why. I do not.”
The Agent’s irritation mixed with his own as the old man firmly planted a hand on the cool black desk in between them.
“The Security of Mentally Stored Information Act declares accessing the thoughts and emotions of compliant citizens to be illegal. You are suspected of violating that law at a level requiring, at the least, long term incarceration.” The Agent punctuated his official statement with a stern glance at the small man seated on the other side of the table. “Your compliance here, in this very room Mr. Lengua, will determine whether your offences require more severe penalties. You won’t be able to feel your way out of that one.”
Nathan considered his options. He recalled the foundational truth of his trade: ‘Uncommon knowledge is power; Common knowledge is weakness.’
“I’d like a lawyer”, he said.
“Feelers like you, Mr. Lengua, are non-compliant citizens, and as such have no right to a lawyer. I assure you, you’re on your own here.” As the Agent’s feeling of power and control grew, Mr. Lengua’s shrank until a rising tide of fear and helplessness swallowed it completely.
“I’ll take my chances in jail”
by submission | Dec 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Stefan Aeschbacher
The ancient city had been buried for over five thousand years. The digbots were digging at this spot for two hours, fifteen minutes and thirty-five seconds. They were making good progress. So far they had found three plates and a container of unknown purpose. Due to the ideal conditions at this location, most of the artefacts were exceptionally well preserved.
Suddenly the alarm sounded. Digbot #953 had found something unexpected. They had been cataloguing this era for quite some time; something new only popped up once every few months. The eagerness to see the new object was correspondingly high.
The probability of the new object being a weapon was estimated at 87%. It was therefore immediately put into an armoured storage container. Even though the bestial concept of warfare was something only known from history, they were well equipped to handle such dangerous goods.
The object shown on the holo-screen was cylindrical with a diameter of 6.7cm and a length of 11.5cm. It had been clearly marked as dangerous with red colour. One of the more experienced historians came to the conclusion that the object at hand was an item called “grenade”.
Immediately after securing the object, the historians started the in-depth analysis. Apparently the grenade was filled with a liquid. Not much was known about the race that had lived on earth in this epoch. They called themselves “humans”. It was not known how a “human” would react to the liquid in the grenade. Probably it was some kind of contact poison. Analysis showed it to be extremely sticky. A small lever on the top probably served as the trigger mechanism.
A so far unknown font had been used to mark the weapon. Probably to inform the reader of the extreme danger of the object. The historians were quite good at deciphering human scripture, but this one posed a riddle to them.
Due to the extremely dangerous nature of the object, they decided to store it away. It was put in a high security bunker on an uninhabited moon in the system. It had long ago been ruled, that the mere idea of a weapon had to be hidden from the general public.
Some years later a research team applied a new radiological technique which revealed two more text fragments on the grenade. They suggested that the object was really very dangerous and poisonous. They read: “Do not shake” and “contains caffeine”.
by submission | Dec 3, 2013 | Story |
Author : Andrew D. Murrell
I awoke.
I could still feel the remnants of foreign thoughts gently receding from my consciousness. Then I felt today’s check deposit into my account, twenty one thousand dollars. Minimum wage jobs just don’t pay like they used to do they? I waited to feel the disconnect signal and then opened my eyes. I breathed in deeply and coughed.
Life, I am getting old.
My bed stood me up and disappeared into the floor. A neural link transponder drifted towards me, eagerly offering its services.
“No, I’ve had enough of other people’s opinions for one day.” Ever since the distributed thoughtnet replaced the static web and our minds themselves became commodities for sale, I have yearned for three things in life above all else: stillness, simplicity, and silence.
But what can one do? Life is no longer simple, still, or quiet, it is complex, ever-changing, and constantly berating us with options, opinions, and each other. Even now, only seconds after leaving the thoughtnet I could feel the incoming interaction requests and updates from SocialLink and the AutoBillPay alerting me to the fact I would soon have no money, once again. If only I could just take a break, a real break.
I walked to an Autoportal wall and felt the breeze gently waft through it as the microfibers aligned themselves to direct wind from outside through the thin coating of electric generators. I gestured to the wall and it became transparent. The day was beautiful and sunny, but the infinite suburb of haphazardly colored and eclectic houses was the last thing I needed to be reminded of seeing. I turned away and the wall once again shifted to a shallow opaque green.
No, I don’t need a rest. Just the opposite, I need something to do. I turned inward and navigated through several thought-changing stations to the System Control Menu in my Neural OS. After reflecting on the oddity that one must authenticate to access one’s own brain, I found the most heavily guarded portion of my mind.
“System, go Offline,” a willful auditory confirmation and the system slowed to a halt. I felt blurry. Enhanced senses shut down and the hum of the dim house faded into the background. I stumbled around until I found the manual access panels and switched the house to full power. I knew that I couldn’t afford it, full lighting for even a few hours was prohibitively expensive as the house itself could not generate that much electricity and would have to buy some from our neighbors, but I had to do it. I could not live out my life from inside my head any longer. I needed reality.
Had I been younger I would have punched a hole in the wall. I would have broken some screens. I would have torn off all of my clothes and run down the streets of ugly houses until the community police managed to take me into custody kicking and screaming about the wrongness of it all. But no, it is much too late for that.
I remember the sound of birds, but there are no birds outside anymore. I thought about that for a while. I thought about birds until the mood had passed. I don’t know if I’d even be capable of those things any more anyway, so no, I will stay inside. I will sit in my chair and wait for the government to say that I’m old enough to die. One day they will tell me that I have lived long enough, met the life expectancy and am permitted to leave. Until then, I will turn off the lights, reconnect to the thoughtnet and sell my mindspace to the rich young folks with new ideas. I don’t need to think anymore they said, our lives are perfect.
I awoke, but only for a moment.
