by submission | Feb 15, 2012 | Story |
Author : Phil Newton
Sammy always used his polished titanium Tek-Tech Grav Boots to reach the Hundred Foot High Branch — cheater. I climbed. I climbed well. Still, grav boots were cool. I wish my parents had money.
‘Wiry’, that’s what coach called me. I should try wrestling. I needed more meat on my bones if I wanted to play football.
Sammy wasn’t cut out for football or wrestling, he carried too much meat. He would never be mistaken for wiry. On the other hand, he was the king of the cheap shot. That didn’t win him any friends. He didn’t need any. His parents had money.
Sammy always beat me to the high branch, but I was closing the gap. Grav boots were cool, but they weren’t fast. I was fast — getting faster. Sammy knew. Sammy feared. I overheard him whining to his dad over his wrist com. He wanted the upgrade. His dad refused. Sammy would wear him down. He always did. Sammy was a whining sissy baby. Still, grav boots were cool. I wish my parents had money.
My path is memorized. My muscles recalled each gap, the bounce of each branch. Yesterday, I nearly beat Sammy, even though I slipped on my second step. Sammy saw the inevitable end of his reign. His upgrade will be delivered tomorrow. I could not afford a mistake today.
My climb was perfection. I even flipped up from my last handhold into my perch atop the Hundred Foot High Branch. Sammy didn’t care for my show-boating, though he probably would have kicked me regardless. Grav boots are cool, and titanium is hard.
Sammy the rich boy…
Sammy the ass…
Still, half-way down I’m wishing my parents had money.
by submission | Feb 12, 2012 | Story |
Author : Jason Verch
It was time to put Em to sleep, but he could tell there was something on her mind.
“Everything ok sweetie?” he asked.
“Dad. Kay is an AI, right?”
“Well sure, you know that. She is a robot with an AI built in that controls her.”
“But I thought AIs were made to do really hard things that regular people aren’t smart enough for. Why do we have one for a housekeeper?”
“That is what AIs are mostly used for, but not every AI is smart enough to be a doctor or a scientist. Some are only as smart as an average person, and some not even that smart. Usually the ones that aren’t that smart get destroyed but daddy is able to keep some of the ones from work that don’t work out, and that?s how we got Kay.”
“What if I don’t turn out to be smart, will you and Mommy throw me away?!” She sounded on the verge of tears.
He reassured her, “Of course not sweetie, don’t be silly. That’s just part of my job at work. Mommy and I love you and will always love you no matter what.” This seemed to calm her.
“Do you think someday I could design AIs like you do? I think that would be fun.” She said.
“I think you can do whatever you want when you grow up. You are already smarter than all the other kids in your class, and get perfect marks on all your tests. You can be a doctor, a lawyer or yes, an AI designer. I’m sure you can be whatever you want to be.” Satisfied that he calmed her he added, “But now I need you to be a good little girl and go to sleep. It’s already past your bedtime.”
“Ok daddy. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight Em, I love you,” he said, as he typed the commands on his handheld to put the program in hibernation for the night.
An AI that designs other AIs he thought to himself. Well, I guess it could happen, but there was something unsettling about the thought. Wasn’t there some old 2d movie like that with President what’s His Name where AI robots take over the earth? That was just Hollywood fantasy; he put it out of his mind. He wasn’t sure what Iteration M would be used for, but there was no denying she was already leaps and bounds beyond the first eleven iterations of the program. Whatever she did it would be something great, something to make him proud, and definitely not another damn housekeeper.
by submission | Feb 11, 2012 | Story |
Author : Peter Andrews
The unmoving city. My city.
The boy is frozen now, four, maybe five, feet from the ground, cheeks pulled by inertia’s invisible fingers.
It is up to me–he might never turn into viscera, his limbs and neck at deathly angles. His family might never have to mourn. This day need never end. The sky could remain forever that shade of blue. People moving along the street might never reach their destination.
I walk away down the center of the road, litter lifeless in the air. The blur of tears makes the world a haze that need not exist. In still cars people are mid-conversation. I try to guess what about. Something about children I imagine, something happy. I do this sometimes, freeze the world and piece together my own understanding of it. The only time I have peace. Everything ceases to be, no one calls for me. There is no family wondering why their son/ wife/ baby/ whatever hadn’t been saved, why the Guardian hadn’t stopped that mugger/ rapist/ arsonist/ drunk/ whatever. Just bouncing around in their grief to find something — anything — to focus the loss on.
I am very old in a way. I stopped aging decades ago. I had a destiny: Humanity would die away — plague/ war/ earthquake/ floods/ meteors/ whatever–and I would be left here, alone, in peace.
Now it is different. The blood I cough up is dark, thick. They can’t do anything–their blades can’t cut my skin, their beams bounce off me. I have lived life as an immortal, now they tell me I will die. They wonder: How can a man who cannot be harmed develop cancer? They ask each other, shake heads. One of those things. They don’t think to ask me.
But so long as I do not release time, I have my eternal destiny, my black passenger in stasis.
But no more. I am human enough.
The boy hits the ground. He feels nothing, deep into shock. Another cluster of black cells in me.
I walk the city streets that have given me a life, and a death. Both are gifts.
by submission | Feb 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Barry Reimer
I remember falling. Somehow, I saw it coming seconds before it happened, but I had no way to stop it. Snap. The rope severed. The top of the towering spire of rock began to fall away. During my freefall, time became surreal. Each moment stood alone; an encapsulated eternity. The idyllic scenery of Utah’s canyonlands passed in slow motion around me. Rich orange alien rock formations fused with the light greens of the trees and shrubs.
Crash! The Earth swept my soul from its mortal flesh with impartial efficiency. It was like being sucked from a pressurized chamber into the vacuum of space. There was no tunnel, no light – unless you count the bright blazing sun overhead.
These images still surround me, but they are clouded by a dense fog – a thin veil that I am unable to pull back. My soul has stayed behind. Is this purgatory? Perhaps I am suspended in the memory of my death. I lie between worlds, unable to move on, although I know not why. I pray for the veil to be lifted.
Time stands still. I think to myself, if I am to remain here, let me see my surroundings clearly. I loved this place in life; it was the one place where the horrific memories of war were not as vivid. A maimed special ops officer dying in my arms as I struggle to extricate him from an ambush. My knife at the throat of another assassination target. The explosion that left half of my team dead. In this place, I was almost able to find some peace from these scenes of death. The green and orange stained canyons remain eternal and unchanging in the haze. For a second it seems there might be a thin clearing in the fog above me.
“Doctor Schmidt,” the senior military scientist says, peering over his spectacles at the younger man. “Is the transfer nearly complete? We can only keep his soul in the stasis field for so long, and I don’t want to have to procure another subject.”
The junior scientist looks up from the computer. His cherubic face is alight with excited anticipation, having repressed the horrific reality of the project’s implications long ago. “This is the last pathway to calibrate, sir. We’re almost there.”
“Good,” says the older man. A thin smile forms on his lined face as he looks down at the shining metal of the android lying on the cold steel table before him. It is a masterpiece of mechanical engineering, glistening under the bright fluorescent lights of the lab room. A series of wires connect its body and head to the supercomputer.
With a final keystroke, Dr. Schmidt completes the last pathway. The transfer sequence is initiated. The two scientists watch the android with rapt attention. The anticipation is palpable, like an approaching storm.
I’m not imagining things. There is a thinning in the fog. A hole is forming in the veil at last. I wait with eagerness either for the clarity to return to my majestic surroundings or for what lies beyond. Time is meaningless now.
Something is wrong. I sense it before it happens. The sky is torn violently open in a great cataclysmic gash. My world is suddenly filled with light. Bright. Unnatural. Merciless.
I try to scream. Before the sound can escape, I am sucked through the great wound in the sky. My vision is filled with the terrible light. I hear triumphant human voices. Terror fills me as the beauty of my world vanishes and my soul is trapped in a metal hell.
by submission | Feb 4, 2012 | Story |
Author : Mark Ehler
Lt. Bernard sat, arms crossed, in a 15,000,000 credit coffin. The nuclear battery shorted out and now, without engine power, his ship was just another object in space. Interceptor Pilot Protocol dictated that he stay with his vessel and wait for a patrol to pick him up. That might have worked for downed pilots centuries ago, back on that sandbox called Earth; but here, in the vastness of space – rescue was slim to nil. Bernard slammed the fists of his environment suit into the control panel and called it a “…lousy floating space cow.”
Those who knew him, well, didn’t. Bernard never went out while at the academy because he had seen what happens to students caught drinking, similar reasons kept him from going out with the other pilots when his ship was docked. His whole life was spent with strict adherence to the rules; rules were important, they were the standard and criteria by which he was judged by his superiors. Certainly not superfluous things like flair or creativity. If it weren’t for his strict observance of the rules he might never have been chosen for flight school, might never have been granted the honor of serving at his station, might never have been selected for this mission. Now the rules told him to sit and wait.
The more he thought, the less sense it made. His whole life had built up to this day, this mission; but now, like a novel with a great back story that only fizzled as it progressed, it was over. At least he had a good view of the cosmos… Bernard chuckled to himself. You see, there is this saying that claims some people don’t truly live until they are on their death bed and Bernard finally understood what it meant. Now that his rules had been shattered he remembered why he chose to be an interceptor pilot. All the things his wealth and pedigree could have given him and he chose the life of a soldier, for it was the best way to follow his dream. Every night as a kid in his luxury apartment he dreamt of the stars. The void of the cosmos and the universe’s array of colors in subtle pinhole form was such a stark contrast to the orbital colonies of Mars. With his hand on the surface of the inactive display he pushed himself forward until the dome of his helmet connected with the glass of his cockpit, then he sat and stared in bewilderment. It was indeed ironic to him; all this time he spent reaching for the stars and this was the first time he had really stopped to admire their beauty.
He lifted the emergency eject and the cockpit sprung right open, the atmosphere in his ship rushed out and he was now the closest he had ever been to the stars. Here he lingered clinging to the wing of his downed bird, not a thought for the rules as he found the brightest star in sight. It was a nearby red giant and it too was close to the end of its life where it would explode into a brilliant super nova; such an explosion of vividly colored gas simply makes it the most powerful act of nature in the universe. He had let go of the ship and started drifting towards the giant. He could stretch out as big as possible without fear of touching another human and he could finally look all around him without the walls of mankind.
Bernard curled up as the cold seeped through his suit, taking one long look at his star. As he closed his eyes and drifted into one last sleep a smile crossed his face; satisfaction that he had finally achieved peace swelled from his heart like a tiny explosion in space.
