by submission | Feb 18, 2012 | Story |
Author : B. H. Isaac
My surroundings changed in an instant. The neglected display room and my parked martini glass disappeared, replaced by a frozen landscape with glacial winds tearing at my loosened tux. Fear gave me the momentary strength to free myself from the cacophonous machine and its mechanized tentacles. All remaining delight at the success of this derelict and inebriated attempt to dial the prehistoric glacial epoch faded at the sight of wind-blasted remnants of a lost age. Sections of crumbling walls mixed with prodigious beams and the wreckage of some sort of metal craft which jutted from the ice at random angles. I strained to see beyond 100 meters through an omnipresent mist. There was light, but no sun.
A pair of cloaked shapes seized me. They moved me to a sheltered cavern with an entrance obscured behind the remains of a herculean sign, all its color and iconography blasted beyond recognition.
An assemblage of tattered refugees in clothes similar to mine waited inside, huddling about a warm and faintly glowing device covered with odd levers and back-lit keys. The people appeared to be from different lands and cultures, but all seemed possessed of a distinctly modern aspect. They peered at me with a strange mixture of suspicion and incredulity. I did not understand this reception until thrust before the bed of a dying man who was wrapped in furs and surrounded by throngs of doleful acolytes. I gazed through the murk in horror as my eyes adjusted to the dimness. Though the man appeared quite advanced in years, I recognized him immediately.
He was an older version of me.
The age shriveled man coughed severely, then mustered his remaining strength to hand me a charred note displaying a sequence of curious numbers: 2013011723591347.42301-20.28854. His trembling voice struggled to form words. I understood two: “Be ready.”
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.
