by submission | Jul 15, 2011 | Story
Author : Michael F. da Silva
Being dead, I wasn’t expecting much conversation at the café.
I had loaded the environment as soon as I was uploaded. The red carpet and round lamp-lighted tables stretched out to infinity in all directions. The Viennese coffee that had melted into being tasted as real to my digitised thought patterns as anything I had had before my retirement.
So I was surprised when the legal avatar came down the carpet like a supermodel on the catwalk, successfully pulling off someone’s idea of legal chic.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Vieira. I trust you’ve enjoyed your stay?”
Afternoon was a relative term in Lalaland. It was whatever time of day I wanted it to be.
“So far.” I answered trying to keep annoyance out of my voice and admiring the curve of her hips. “It’s only been a few hours, you know.”
I tried to undress her with the avatar control suite, thinking she might be just some cover girl I had fantasized about when I was a teenager.
“I’m afraid I’m quite the real thing, Mr. Vieira. I’m here about your return to Reality.” She pronounced the word like it came with its own punctuation mark.
“There must be some mistake. I’ve only just uploaded. I signed up for the Bachelor Retirement Package. That’s fifty years simulated vacation. I just got here, like I said.”
“Mr. Vieira.” My own name was starting to get on my nerves at this point. “There seems to have been a problem with your upload procedure. As you may recall, we perform a thorough analysis of each client’s neural pathways prior to digitalisation and upload to their vacation servers.”
“Yes.” I contributed, hoping against hope that this was going to lead to a champagne-drenched lap dance.
“What is left to the fine print, however, is that there is always the small chance of a mimetic neural virus being present in a client’s subconscious.”
I blinked incomprehension. Technical mumbo jumbo. Not my forte.
She plodded on, legally obliged to keep me in the loop. ”What that means, Mr. Vieira, is that you have had your fifty years simulated vacation. You just lose all memory of it after an interval of three hours and two minutes. I hope you understand.”
“Wait a minute. This has to be a mistake. I’ve only just arrived!”
“It’s not a mistake, Mr. Vieira.”
“Well, fix it then! Make me remember. I’ll be damned if I get packed back into a synthetic with no memories of my own vacation!”
“I’m afraid that can’t be helped, Mr. Vieira. A mimetic neural virus is intrinsic to a subject’s specific thought patterns. It can’t be removed without severely damaging the subject’s thought patterns at their core level. I would suggest you make good use of the next hour.”
And then she just walked away towards a crimson horizon leaving me with a panic-laced erection and not enough time to do anything with it. I considered running her down and bending her over a table for one last hurrah.
“That simply wouldn’t do, Mr. Vieira.” She said turning neatly on one foot. “There are security measures to prevent such things from happening in virtual environments. And you would still face legal action for making the attempt.”
“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do, you courtroom drama bitch?!”
She cocked her head to one side and narrowed icy blue eyes. “You still have both hands, don’t you?”
by submission | Jul 14, 2011 | Story
Author : Ossian Ritchie
Frank Henstein stepped into the Huvver lift and was propelled upwards through the daily debris of handywipes and food wrappers that bobbed in the impossible antigravity lift field. The office stinks of fake pine and ice-cream aftershave.
Frank was born in Croydon, 1987, his brother Barry had been the one keen on Cryo. At twenty-nine Frank begrudgingly signs up to help promote Barry’s faltering Cryo business. The full body scan and physical checkup reveals Frank is dying of an incurable cancer. Without blinking, Barry enthusiastically suggests Frank freezes himself until science can find a cure.
Frank does not want to die. Getting frozen seems as much like death to him – and Barry wanted the Cryo done right now. Frank explains this to Barry, the two embrace and Barry cries and tells his little brother that he does not want to do anything to hurt him. It is touching. Frank wakes the next day, one thousand years in the future: his cancer cured.
On his break, Frank opens one of the few cartons of cigarettes left in the world and smokes at his desk. It is somebody’s birthday, but he can’t remember their name, or their nickname, or hair group. He is sure half the room are at the party right now: impossible to tell when the party is inside the computer.
Barry has already been and gone. They told Frank how long Barry lived, but four hundred and fifty years is too long for Frank to fathom. Frank can only wonder why his big brother hadn’t called for him.
His sister lived next, she barely lasted a year before calling her mother and father back from the dead. She died for real at the age of sixty, and their parents both went around the same time. The records don’t say why they died, or why they did not call on Frank. Maybe they all felt like he did, that this was unlivable, that they would not share this hell with the ones they loved?
Frank tries to relax, but only succeeds in starting another cigarette. He wants to watch more about what life was like two hundred years ago, when his parents lived. Frank remembers the last time he tuned in to History Unlimited – the next day, everyone turned up for work dressed as prehistoric men and spent the day throwing mud and staging crude, electric wars.
The girl that Frank tries to talk to every single day stops at the end of his desk.
“Chup,” she says.
“Chup,” he copies. She laughs and walks on. She greets her friends with a manly ‘chup’ and there is more laughter. Then she dances in a caustic 3d haze. It hurts to look at it if the broadcast is not meant for you and Frank winces as he tries to pick out details in the fizzing digital mush.
Frank wonders what to do after work. Even in his daydreams he goes home. Home to cushions that behave like pets and beds that burn his covers off in the morning with a fake fire he will never get used to. He dreams of the robot kitchen and how he will react, disgusted by every single meal he is presented with. He wonders how his sister lasted, almost a year, like this.
by submission | Jul 13, 2011 | Story
Author : Charlotte Lenox
She watched with tears in her eyes–they were going to fight again, this time too close to the spaceport. A massive, spidery one with corded, violet-blue legs stepped down into the valley, avalanches of snow following in its wake. The wall of windows she watched from shuddered and the rugged earth rumbled as another beast’s shadow passed overhead. Backing away, she almost fell into a row of seats near her boarding gate.
No one screamed because no one else was there.
Fresh terror suffused her as part of an indigo carapace cleared the spaceport and grazed her field of view. Memories filled her mind in rapid succession: the pale rime of the horizon, the skinned knees while playing on a lonely road, the clouds of mating swirls flickering at one another in the wind, her ear to the ground listening for her homeworld’s molten heartbeat. Then there were the deaths and fouling of the air when they appeared–from where, no one knew, or wouldn’t say. People had swamped spaceports (some had died in the press of bodies), taking with them whatever they could carry.
She had never left, and now never could. But then, she’d never wanted to leave her only friend behind. She had run away crying from her parents, and they had had left her behind. Her gate had been forever sealed weeks ago. By now, essentials were running out–food, clean air, time, sanity–but that didn’t matter, not anymore. The beasts collided with a heavy, spraying crash that painted the mountains burgundy.
A silvery crack bolted across the windows. Her scream finally filled her silenced world.
by submission | Jul 12, 2011 | Story
Author : M.J. Hall
“Is this it?” the young man asked. “The evidence to prove your thesis?”
“Yes,” she said, with quiet conviction. “I think this artifact might be the key to the entire society. If it’s intact. If it still functions. If the scans read it right . . . “
For years she had taught about the Ancestors, a people of networks, and books of faces, and pale skin that would scald in sunlight. Her dark purple arms glowed magenta in the red light of the planet’s dying sun, a skin tone that evolved in their people through a thousand years of UV exposure on a planet practically devoid of ozone.
A beep sounded from the tablet in her hand.
“It’s here.” She spoke softly, as always, but now excitement sang in her voice.
She had read the works of all the old authors in her field—Willey, Jennings, Binford. Strange names from eons ago, and even stranger methods described in their work as they dug into the soil—actually touched the dirt!—with their primitive tools. Despite an odd sense of nostalgia, she knew the ionizing radiation from the loam beneath her would kill her within a week without lotion to block its harmful emanations. She didn’t dare touch it.
She squinted hard at the sheen on the soil’s surface for a moment. Then, with a careful hand, she drew two parallel lines in the soil above the artifact. Changing to the opposite axis, she drew two parallel lines, perpendicular to the first and intersecting them. Without glancing up, she began to lecture.
“Dr. Emuh believes that this symbol was religious iconography. But I think it served a social function. It was a crucial piece of etiquette in relating to others in the social network . . . “ She continued automatically as she adjusted the settings on her sonic trowel. Switching from magnetic imaging to an excavation feature, she carefully manipulated the parallel blades into the earth at her feet. The machine ticked off the centimeters as she squatted to push it farther into the iridescent soil. As she reached twenty centimeters below datum she paused, holding her breath in an effort to hold the blades completely still as she adjusted the settings. One slip now could ruin a lifetime’s work, or at least a dissertation’s worth.
Two more green blades extended, perpendicular to the first. They now formed a box around the location of the unseen artifact, and with the lightest touch she activated the bottom of the cube. Twenty centimeters below their feet another panel sealed off the bottom of the cube. Carefully, gently, and ever-so-slowly she removed the artifact, encased in its matrix of loam, the decayed midden of a thousand generations. Her student moved fast to slide the hovercart under the excavated block. Once it was safely delivered she adjusted the settings on her trowel once more. Sonic waves gently pulsed against the artifact, shaking the dirt of a thousand years away. She barely registered her student’s gasp as the small black rectangle was revealed.
Unconsciously, she held her breath once more as she keyed a final combination. The machine first vacuum-sealed the box, drying the contents instantaneously, then sent a full charge through the antiquated system. Without daring to look at her student, she touched the last key.
The artifact came to life, its screen glowing for the first time in a thousand years. Its mechanized voice droned a single word: “DROID”.
As she exhaled the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding, she noticed her student’s grin.
“Congratulations, Doctor Aisling.”
by submission | Jul 10, 2011 | Story
Author : Julian Miles
The cell was spartan yet comfortable. In the functional frame chair, the figure sat with the plain dark blue jumpsuit hanging on him like a drape over furniture. He looked up with weary eyes as the door opened and a well-dressed figure entered. He reflexively pushed for link, but the implanted screen prevented his uplinks with a painless but frightening silence where the world had once been at his call. The figure closed the door and sat cross-legged on the floor. With a smile, the figure spoke in calm, warm tones.
“Hello, Marten. I’m Steve. Executioner’s Counsel.”
Marten stared at this shockingly normal looking agent of doom.
“You don’t look like I expected.”
Steve smiled again.
“Precisely.”
“So, you here to tell me how it happens?”
“No, I’m here because you have raised concerns. The Executioners will not act without clarity. In action and motive.”
“Look, you have the uplink AV of the event. I killed him.”
“You did. With some considerable overkill, it has to be said.”
“He was a monster, untouchable by law. He oversaw my daughter’s murder and drove my wife to suicide. So I executed him. Simple. Now go tell your bosses to get me dead.”
Marten shifted under Steve’s intent gaze. His uplinks quivered as if they were being queried in anonymous mode, but he received only silence. Steve shook his head and sighed.
“You’re determined to go all the way, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You do realise that uplink recorded your investigations? That material has resulted in several people going to the Executioners without Counsel. Which is more than grounds for you to receive Executioner’s Mercy.”
“I killed him! The court said I had reduced him beyond replication or Transit! What does it take to get you to kill me?”
Marten’s desperate stress allowed Steve to drop into his emotional volition centres and read the truth, but by law, Marten had to say it. He had to commit himself.
“I am here because what you did is justifiable and as such, for you to continue to seek Execution has caused the Five to consider Mandating you.”
Marten reacted like he had been electrified. His eyes opened wide and he gasped for air and words before a hoarse croak tore itself from him,
“No!”
Tears poured down Marten’s face as he continued in a broken whisper
“He took everything and nearly destroyed me. I only stayed to avenge my ladies and make sure my folks were cared for.”
“You mean that you would have ended yourself except that the suicide directives would have reverted your estate to the Treasury?”
“Yes. I want to be with my family. Please. Tell them. I want to go. Their mercy would be a living death sentence.”
Steve sat quietly before wiping a single tear from his own cheek. He watched it dry on his finger. The only real judge of honesty, Executioner One called it. If you felt nothing then you were on the way to being a part of the problem. In the chair, Marten Thompson’s body voided itself and with that spasm, toppled to lie on the floor. Steve stood and turned to face the door. He straightened his suit, then activated his duty uplink;
“Executioner Three. Sanction applied as grounds for Mercy judged to be inhumane.”
