by submission | Mar 29, 2011 | Story
Author : Sevanaka
It is an unnatural sensation. A man is meant to stand; two feet solidly planted on the ground. Oh, for the sweet touch of earth between toes, grassy shoots tickling bare feet. Instead there is only a sinking sensation while the wind whispers its secrets; its guarded words lost to the noise of a singing hull slipping through the sky.
One by one the stars fade. Streaming clouds and slowly forming atmosphere obscure the shining motes. Constellations dim, and vanish. The radiance of the heavens, now reduced to a dull blur beyond the screens. This man is going home.
His hands ache from the grip he keeps on the console before him. His head throbs from the swinging acceleration. Planetfall used to be much worse, he knows, but that doesn’t mean he must enjoy the transition. Yet a ragged smile teases his lips with its presence – it had been ages since he had last seen home. He ponders, for a moment, the woman he is returning to. It has been a year. He has seen the stars, in all their glory, unfazed by clouded nights or city lights. He has been to the far reaches of human space. The quiet blackness that threatens to take you into itself. The edge, where the stars themselves beckon the souls of men with songs of light and brilliance, echoing secrets of a furious inferno.
And still he returns, to the woman he once loved. He stares again at the picture taped to the console. Stares and wonders. He remembers the struggle, out on the edge of sanity, where the pull of those fiery pins of light was almost too great… where the tug was in fact too great for some of the crew. She will not remember this. He remembers the fight, the struggle, to turn the ship back. He remembers the men that lost themselves to the blackness, who walked off the ship and into the nothingness. She will not. He remembers the siren call of the stars, how they begged for his company. She has never heard them speak, let alone sing.
He tries to clear his head, to shake loose these lingering thoughts of the stars beyond the stars, as the capsule jostles his tired body. A sharp jab of turbulence catches him off guard and he bites his tongue. He hears a curse growled in the cabin, and is surprised to realize it is his voice echoed back to him. Turbulence means atmosphere. Turbulence means he is moments from… his scowl quickly turns to a laugh: one of relief, of satisfaction – this man is going home.
But to what? It has been a year. The smile in the photograph seems so unfamiliar. But the feeling that tightens his chest, that feeling the stars could never provide, reminds him.
Falling. It is such an unnatural sensation.
by submission | Mar 28, 2011 | Story
Author : N. Thomas Parshall
Intro to Quantum Mechanics was the hardest class that I took during my junior year. String theory, field theory, and the Planck constant battered against the walls of my mind, and I was grasping none of it.
Weeks, than months passed and my grade continued to fall to the point where I was considering dropping the class. I had finally worked up the nerve to approach the professor when we had a guest lecturer that changed my mind and my life.
He called himself Dr. Charles Dodgson. From the chuckles, only two of my classmates got the reference. Dodgson shot the three of us a secretive little smile.
“What I’m here to talk about today is the mistaken belief of many of my colleagues in the wave function collapse of the Heisenberg Uncertainty. Now, now Professor. You know as well as I that the Multi Worlds Interpretation only gives the illusion of collapse in a single framework of observation.”
“But, what if, what if a mind could be trained to see past that illusion and follow all of the different wave paths? The observer always affects the observed. So I ask the question. Wouldn’t such a mind eventually be able to affect and interact with the observed wave paths?”
See, this is the part where everybody starts calling me a liar. I swear it’s true.
He turned and walked to the edge of the stage while standing still. He didn’t split in two like in the movies, or blur and morph. It’s just; one instant there was one and the next, two. They both grinned out at us.
Before we could call illusion, they both walked up to the professor and picked him up from either side. Putting the wild eyed man down, they continued to lecture in a bizarre stereo.
“What you have just seen is my interaction with a single alternate wave function, pulling another me from a different MWI. But, each action that each of us takes has trillions upon trillions of wave functions.” And they both turned and walked a few paces while standing still. “But they are all equally valid, and a trained mind can interact with them all. You may not believe me, but while I am here talking to you, I am also talking to classes in other cities, working as an auto mechanic, writing my third novel, and robbing a bank.”
He smiled his secretive little smile at us again.
“Actually, that last is happening in the quantum that you all perceive. And I’m sure all of you will shortly be questioned by the authorities, probably multiple times.” Three of him winked at us, turned and were gone. “All I can say is tell them the truth.
“On the quantum level, I’m not really here.”
And he turned and was gone.
The police came and asked their questions. They left unhappy with the answers, but the video of the lecture backed up all of our stories.
I did see Dr. Dodgson again. After my second interview with the police he came to me and offered me a position as his pupil.
I realize this makes me an accessory after the fact, but you see, officer, like Dr. Dodgson:
I’m not really here.
by submission | Mar 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Eric Poch
“So there’s nothing I can do?”
“That about sums it up, yes”
Martin had been pacing in a damp field for the better part of an hour, speaking to his companion in increasingly hostile tones.
“Then why the hell did you tell me!?” Martin rubbed his hands together. His palms were becoming soggy. The friendly tone of his companion did not change.
“Please understand, it’s nothing personal. It’s simply protocol, Martin”
His friend did not shout, or pace, or sweat. He simply stood in the wet grass; staring dreamily into space.
Martin increased his pace.
“But why do you have to tell me? Why do you have to tell anyone?”
There was a period of silence, during which his friend did not avert his eyes from the stars. Finally he answered.
“Guilt”
Martin stopped dead in his tracks and allowed himself a burst of hysterical laughter.
“Guilt?! Telling someone makes you feel guilty? So, what- the knowledge that you are destroying a planet isn’t enough to make you feel bad? You have to tell someone!?”
“Yes”
“WELL ISN’T THAT JUST PEACHY?!”
“Martin, please. You must understand…the process-”
“Don’t tell me.”
“But protocol dictates-”
“Don’t!”
“Martin-”
“LALALALALALA-”
Very well, said a cool voice in his head. If you will not listen, I will show you, Martin Denson.
Martin, who had clapped his hands over his ears in an attempt to drown out his friends voice, found himself suddenly staring into the empty void of space. The damp grass was no longer beneath his feet. In fact, there was literally nothing beneath his feat. The cool november air was sucked out of his lungs. He screamed, but there was no sound.
Don’t panic, said the voice in his head, You will not die.
The voice was soothing. Martin could feel his heartbeat slowing. He breathed in, and his lungs expanded, but not with oxygen. He breathed out, but it wasn’t carbon-dioxide.
Out of the darkness he began to see tiny pinpricks of light. As they swarmed around him, Martin realized they were stars. He reached out to one…
They are 36 light years away, Martin. You cannot touch them. Please, watch.
Martin look down- or more appropriately- beneath his feet, and saw the Earth. He watched it spin silently through the void.
Now…listen.
Martin closed his eyes.
…
He heard nothing, save the beating of his heart.
…
Then there was only silence.
…
Then… something beneath the silence… something that had been there all along. It was as old as the moon and the stars… a deep, bone-shaking wail of pain that he could feel the in back of his skull.
It was the Earth.
He began to cry. The tears froze to his face. He knew. He knew why the earth wept.
Watch, Martin.
He saw every human being; Every man, woman and child. He saw them going to work, skipping class, eating lunch, playing, murdering, screaming, praying…
And then he saw them fall asleep. All of them. All at the same time. They simply stopped what they were doing… laid down their heads ..and fell asleep.
And that was it.
Martin closed his eyes. He was back in the field. His friend was gone, and he was alone; standing in the wet grass.
He stood there for a while, staring into space. Finally he sat down, laid back on the grass, and closed his eyes.
For the first time in his life, Martin felt the earth turning beneath him.
by submission | Mar 26, 2011 | Story
Author : John Tudball
A chorus of personalised beeps and buzzing erupts from our laps and in record time we’re tapping on our Panels to see if this is the one, if this is the vote we’ve been waiting for. A chorus of groans, Pete swears at his screen. It’s not.
“What did you all go for?” Pete asks the room.
We all voted against. Before the PopularVote app was released, I’d stay up all night watching elections, cheering the political parties on. At work the next day running on just a couple hours sleep I’d always be shocked at all the fresh faces checking their news feeds and learning there and then who ran the country now. At night it felt like everyone cared, like everyone was with me. I hated finding out I’d been the minority. I couldn’t understand the apathy. Well this time I know I’m not alone. There’s nearly a hundred million users logged in.
Pete and Paula are trying to distract themselves with playing TotalArcade. Megan has a videolink up on her screen, watching the big demonstration in Hyde Park alongside clips from the BBC Comedy channel. I’ve got Gallup on my screen, all sorts of fancy graphs and charts trying to predict which way this will go. In this room, across the whole country, we’re all just waiting and everybody knows this.
Every party, every pressure group, every individual campaigner. Anyone with a license is flooding PopularVote with new legislation, trying to take advantage of the numbers to push their agendas before the main event comes through and we all leave.
You need two thirds support from at least forty million responses for a PopularVote to become law. Generally it takes a couple of weeks, sometimes months even. In the last three minutes sixty four million people shouted down the Defense Of Family’s proposed ban on gay marriage. Ten minutes ago a massive seventy three million citizens landed an even fifty-fifty split on increasing soldiers’ pay and before that a Mr Franklyn Neill lost his PV license when 99.9% of respondants did not back him being named president. What on earth would we need a president for when we’ve got PopularVote?
“Okay,” I say, “it’s going to come through in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… NOW!”
The chorus sings again. Everyone laughs but that stops quickly when check our screens. This is it. I vote For. I regret it immediately. When we argued it out last night it almost came to blows, but we all agreed we’d vote together and take the consequences together. I can barely breathe. In roughly thirty seconds we find out if we just declared war.
by submission | Mar 24, 2011 | Story
Author : Jeremy Koch
Sasha lay on a rust-flecked chrome slab under the rewriter’s dim green light, wincing slightly every few seconds as the self-service amputator locked into place. It slid a sequential series of nine hollow spikes, each six centimeters long, easily into the flesh of her arm, just below the elbow; this was always the worst part, painwise, but it’d be over soon. It was worth it.
The final needle pierced her skin, and then muscle, finally bone. The flow actuator kicked to life with a shudder and a low chugging sound – disturbing, but she was well-used to it now. This was her fourth designer phenotype since her arrival.
The smell – a rank, antiseptic stench of sizzling chlorine – hit her nose just as the amputator’s work became visible. The veins of her forearm and hand pulsed a deep chemical green, and the skin began paring away from the muscle as before an invisible flenser. Blood pooled and then erupted into microscopic bubbles, turning instantly to coppery steam as it pumped from her disintegrating arteries. By this time, the pain was dissipated – indeed, impossible, as her nerve clusters had already gone up in an acrid mist seconds before.
The machine’s clunking sped up. She watched, as always, with glammered fascination as the last of the skin dissolved and muscle peeled back, fiber by fiber, exposing bone that took on a beetle-wing sheen before it too began to crackle and deteriorate. Within minutes the actuator wound down; Sasha was left gazing serenely at the vaporous stump of her left arm.
Deadened nerves in her upper arm registered vague cold as the flow actuator restarted, this time emitting a vigorous sloshing. A pinkish mix of engineered viral solution and bioaccelerant coursed through the hollow spikes; presently viscid, vein-roped masses protruded from the precisely shorn remnant of her arm. New bone, glistening with fresh leukocytes spontaneously generated by the stimulated marrow, sprung violently forth and rapidly sprouted a web of whitish sinew. She felt detached cracking as the ossified growth bent and twisted, forming a wrist joint, and then split, fanning out into five scrabbling fingers. Sasha regarded this consideringly, and, with her intact hand, adjusted a dial on the rewriter’s console. Two of the five fingers split again, and she nodded, satisfied, as the seven digits waved and flexed.
Threads of hard muscle the matte color of gunmetal, woven together with capillaries of contrasting, sanguinary red, enveloped the pulsing bone from humerus to metacarpals. Keratinous talons flared from the fingertips with a series of fleshy pops, casting tiny droplets of pink froth across the table. They’d be retractable when the procedure was done; for now they gleamed wetly beneath the ambient illumination.
It was almost finished now. She could perceive feeling creeping back into her limb, as a light itch she had come to relish, and strove to master her excitement till the machine had completed its work. The itching crescendoed and crossed into pain; with ground teeth, she studied her skin knitting itself neatly over reinforced bone and hyperoxygenated muscle. Then it was over – the nerves settled into sync with her brain, and she carefully curled her new hand into a loose fist. The needles retracted, leaving oozing holes, and Sasha reached for a packet of iodine and gauze. After applying them, she stood and spread her wings with a yawn, the emerald tint of their translucent membrane nearly invisible under this light. “I already can’t wait to do this again,” she thought as she sought the exit. “Next time I’m getting the brain job.”
