by submission | Jan 30, 2013 | Story |
Author : Philip Smith
Most of the bots you see in diners are the ones that serve the food. We have one but it was a bad decision on my part. Real waitresses give you a smile and make you feel welcome. Automota makes a place look cheap. When it breaks I won’t go to the trouble of getting it fixed.
Sometimes we get big junkers and security units or the type that move containers around at the docks. There isn’t much for them here. The cold doesn’t bother them. They order food or drinks just for the table and look out of the window or watch the customers. I don’t mind them so long as they aren’t so big they scrape the roof. Before our policy changed we would only turn them away during busy hours.
One tin can started coming in regularly. I think it worked in the hotel a block down. It was thin and the top of its shoulders were fashioned like epaulettes. We don’t get many like that. Every night it ordered bottomless coffee which went untouched and watched the door until closing.
One day a girl walked through the door and as soon as it saw her, the bot turned its head and tracked her across the room. She was plain-looking if you ask me. Wouldn’t have noticed her if it wasn’t for the tin can’s interest. She wore a bonnet, leather driving gloves, a long coat and beneath that a dress, bow pulling tight around her waist. As soon as she sat it slid off the stool and walked over to her.
You don’t often hear them speak. It had a man’s voice, thin and flat. Like he was speaking through glass. There was a little click before and after it spoke. It said.
‘Lisa.’
She started and the look on her face said she wasn’t happy to see it. She looked back to her menu.
‘Lisa.’ It said again. ‘We can not feel warmth but we know that your body is warm. We know your body can rise to meet us. We remember.’
She said. ‘I don’t want to be reminded. Please leave me alone.’ She looked around for help. I put my hand on the zap stick behind the bar.
A click. ‘You were once loving and open and everything was good. We have evidence. Photographs. Many hours were logged.’ It put its ‘hand’ on her wrist.
She said. ‘That was before you were repurposed’ and then, raising her voice. ‘You are hurting me!’
People looked around. I stepped from behind the bar.
It released her wrist and moved back. ‘We just want you to remember. We would never hurt you.’
She looked around at the other customers. Forks set down or frozen on the way to mouths. She lowered her voice. ‘The feeling comes first.’ She said. ‘Then the rationalisation. That is the most honest answer I can give you.’
A click. ‘Old memory is a defect in this model.’
I put my hand on it. ‘That’s enough, buddy, time to go.’
She re-buttoned her coat and reached for her hat. ‘I have to go.’ She said. ‘I have to go to work.’
‘Take care of yourself.’ It said.
She pushed past us and repeated. ‘I am late for work.’
It remained motionless for a time and then left. People went on with their meals.
It hasn’t been back and we don’t allow bots in the restaurant anymore. They have their own section at the bar. Better for everyone, that way.
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by submission | Jan 29, 2013 | Story |
Author : George R. Shirer
The girl is naked. Long limbed. Gorgeous. He can smell her from where he sits, in the back of the club, where the shadows are thickest.
She struts across the stage, hips shaking, breasts swinging as she works the crowd. Bottle-blonde hair flies around her face. Heart-shaped. Plump, pink lips. Dark eyes rimmed with mascara and glitter.
The eyes betray her for what she is. A soulless thing. When the light is just right, he can see the telltale glimmer of the bioluminescent markers.
She finishes her set and walks off stage. Her skin glistens with perspiration.
Drawing a breath, he stands and heads backstage. A bouncer blocks the way.
“No patrons backstage,” growls the mountain of steroid-enhanced muscle.
“Not a patron.”
He flips his coat aside, revealing his badge and the shooter strapped to his waist. The bouncer’s reaction is instant. He steps aside and heads for the manager’s office.
Backstage is tawdry. Young beauties of both genders are in various states of undress. The air smells of perspiration, cheap perfume and burning electrics.
He spots the girl. She’s sitting in a chair, pulling a comb through her hair.
The shooter is in his hand, coughing almost before he realizes he’s drawn it. He sees the girl fly back, the center of her chest exploding, reduced to wet meat.
Screams fill the air. The dancers cower.
“What the fuck?”
He turns, finds himself face to face with the manager of the club. The manager’s face goes white as he spots the shooter, recognizes the trefoil badge of a synerman.
“Oh crap.”
“Yes,” says the synerman. “Did you know she was a synthetic?”
The manager’s beady eyes dart to the dead girl.
“I had no idea.”
“Hope you lie better than that in court,” says the synerman. “We traced a class one bio-threat back to this dump. I’m betting it originated with the dead girl.”
The manager’s face goes white. “Oh Christ. I had no idea! Honest to God!”
“Tell it to the judge,” says the synerman. “If you live long enough to make it to court.”
From the main club, sudden pandemonium. Patrons shouting in alarm as quarantine troops pour into the place. The manager and dancers are frogmarched away to a prison-hospital.
Alone, the synerman stands over the dead girl.
He feels a flash of sorrow for it, but no remorse. Synthetics are incubators for disease. It’s why their production is a death-penalty offense. It’s why people like him are recruited and set on them, hounds after rabbits.
Drawing in a lungful of air, he turns away. Suddenly, a cough racks him. It’s like razor blades in his chest. He staggers, catches a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror. His gaunt face is pale, blood bubbling crimson from his lips.
Hell, thinks the synerman.
He falls to the floor, next to the dead girl.
She got me.
by submission | Jan 27, 2013 | Story |
Author : Lela Maarie De La Garza
There’d once been a golden age, Pearson thought. What would this one be called? He reflected on the meaning of different colours. Green? There wasn’t a speck of it left. The blue age? If blue meant hope, there was certainly no more of that. The purple age? The last royalty had left its throne years ago. Red denoted war. Well there was no more real war, though a few battles still raged wearily in the bombed out husk that had once been earth.
Grey. It was the colour of the future and the colour of the sky, even at mid-day. “The grey age,” Pearson said softly, testing it out.
“No no. Not the grey age. The white age.” A clear, bell like voice spoke, and Pearson turned around, searching for it. Nothing was visible through the ashy haze. “Look up,” the voice commanded, and he did. A star hung above, thrillingly bright, so close Pearson put up his hand and tried to feel it. “Not yet,” the voice said. “But soon. This star is on a trajectory with that of earth. Day after tomorrow they will meet.”
Pearson shook his head. “Then this world will be destroyed. And perhaps that will be for the best.”
“Wrong. There will be no collision. The star will pass harmlessly, but its light will sweep earth, ridding it of all hate, even the memory of hate. Green will come back to the trees, blue to the sky. Hands will reach out in love, never again in war. It will be the age of peace. The white age.”
Pearson waited a few minutes, but the voice did not speak again. He wondered what it had been. A mocking, lying demon or a truth-telling angel? Was there really a star or was it an illusion? Would it collide with earth, annihilating everything? Or would it rid the planet of its dark past, creating a future of hope and peace? A white age.
The light seemed to hang closer. Pearson put up his hand. This time he almost touched it. And he almost knew the answer.
by submission | Jan 26, 2013 | Story |
Author : Townsend Wright
“Alright let me see if I can explain this to you,” I wasn’t very good at deciphering the aliens’ emotions, especially with the monotonous voice of the translator machine, but I was fairly certain this was condescension. “What do you know so far?”
“Well,” I said, thinking over what the scientists I employed had said, “we know you come from the planet just closer to the sun than ours, and that your biology is based on entirely different levels than ours.”
I waited for my words to translate, for the alien to speak, and then for the translator again. “Both true, both true. But here’s what you don’t know: we’re your—”
“Uh—sorry, that last word didn’t didn’t translate properly.”
“Oh, what, you don’t have the concept of—? Well, that explains a lot. Anyway, basically we created you.”
I heard gasps from my people. I tried to find meaning in the alien’s words. “You—you mean at some point in our development you visited us and somehow affected our development?”
“No. We created you.” I looked at the alien. It had pale, dull skin, and its body was just—odd.
“You didn’t create us. No body created us! We started out as single celled organisms, which mutated over and over and slowly developed into the ecosystem on our planet today!”
“I’m impressed, you figured out evolution! And again that’s all true. But your missing a few details.” It paused, almost like it was waiting for me to say “like what?” like I was some idiot who had no idea and was extremely eager to know what it had to say. I didn’t comply. “Namely,” he said as if there was no pause, “where those single celled organisms came from. You see,” it continued now thinking I was incapable of interrupting it, “a long, long time ago our planet became very crowded, actually much as it is right now, unfortunately. It became so crowded that we resolved to move some of our people to Mars—that’s what we called your planet at the time—well, now too. But, at the time, there was very little air, and no liquid water, which we need, and it was very cold, so we made a nanite—er, a very very small machine, which we sent to Mars where it would self replicate using Martian dirt and terraform—uh, make the planet like our own. That would be your single celled organism.”
“You actually expect me to believe that?” I said. The problem was I sort of did. It was still all just speculation about where those first cells came from, and this sort of thing was one of the theories.
“Actually, I couldn’t care less. Those nanites were only supposed to be active for twenty of our years, after that we’d deactivate them from Earth and make our way over here. But, right after we sent it off we had a massive war, centuries of rebuilding, another war, blah blah blah,” I had no idea what that last part meant, “anyway you got left alone for a few millennia and a bit out of hand, so much so our signal couldn’t take out your complex forms all the way from Earth. So, here we are.” It turned to the other aliens, “Geoffrey,” one of them took out a small box with a red button.
“Wait, what?!”
“So long, you four armed, sparkly pink freaks!”
“Wait, you can’t—”
by submission | Jan 24, 2013 | Story |
Author : Michael T Schaper
Tanya looked out across the room. The party was in full swing and, because both of her sisters now had children of their own, any chance at conversation was being drowned out by a multitude of little voices. She swooped down, picked up one of her young nephews, and spun him around in her arms.
“How does that feel, honey?”
“Whee!” was the only answer she got. The three year old’s face was lit up with sheer pleasure.
Kids, Tanya thought. So full of life and love.
Tanya glanced across the room at her husband Peter. His attention was clearly elsewhere, in an animated conversation with her brother-in-law, both of them ignoring the good-natured chaos around them.
“Hey,” she shouted over the noise, “want to join us?”, but Pete just shook his head and turned away.
Tanya sighed. We can fly through the depths of space, use nanotechnology to extend our lives, climb Everest and even build perfect robots, she told herself. But we still can’t work out why some males warm to children and others don’t.
“All good, Tan?” Her youngest sister materialized alongside, extra wineglass in hand.
Tanya took a deep gulp and shrugged. “Five years,” she said, taking another long draught. “I’m five years older than you. Yet here you are, with a family of your own. What have I got?”
The cherished hope of a child of her own seemed to be slipping further away every year.
Ever since she’d first met Peter, Tanya had known that a natural conception wasn’t possible. But even all the many other treatments hadn’t bought her any closer to having her own family.
“If you still want to try, then you have to do something about it,” her sister said. “Have you ever thought of adoption? If Peter agrees, that is.”
And that was precisely the problem. “We could apply you know,” she explained to Peter after they’d left the party, “and get a response fairly quickly. But the adoption agency has to know that we’re both keen to do this. I can’t be the only parent in this relationship.”
Peter stopped and looked into her eyes. He was thinking, really thinking it through, Tanya realized. She could almost hear all the gears in his brain ticking over. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, really. But it’s not something that interests me. Hasn’t in the past, doesn’t now. It’s just not the way I am.”
Weren’t guys designed to get better at dealing with kids the more time spent around them? It didn’t seem to be working for Peter.
They drove home without saying another word. Tanya would have felt her heart was breaking, if she hadn’t already expected this answer.
*****
She woke the next morning with a still heavy heart. Peter was standing in the doorway, as he did every Sunday morning, her breakfast on a tray. He was good like that, Tanya realized. Good on the predictable. And kids weren’t like that. They were messy, confronting, hard to understand or control.
He placed the tray on the bed beside her and giving her a long kiss. “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want. I guess I’m just not wired that way, am I?” he said with a wistful smile.
She looked at him closely for a minute, this beautiful husband of hers. Peter was right: he wasn’t built that way.
And her sister was also right. If Tanya wasn’t happy with that, then she had to do something about it.
She leant over, kissed Peter softly, and ran her hands through his hair until she found the spot. It took just a few seconds to switch data chips, then wait for the reset function to work. She smiled at him once more, then decided they could go looking for nursery decorations this afternoon. There. Now he was wired that way.
