Chosen

Author : Charity Bradford

Time moved toward a decision that would affect millions of lives. They needed more information and there was only one way to gather it. Someone must be chosen to be their eyes and ears. A human counterpart would process the emotions. Then the decision.

They watched the earth as a whole for a thousand years, and then focused on individual lives for another hundred. The chosen one waited patiently as his leaders decided on a human female. After watching the female for weeks, they recognized the signs of her pain even though they did not comprehend the sensation or meaning of it. She packed her bags and started to drive. She was utterly alone…and perfect.

A deer in the headlights, swerving, rolling, hanging upside down with tears running down her cheeks, and a melancholy love ballad crackling on the radio. This is how they met her in the flesh. Humans were so fragile. They cut. They made improvements, implanted the sensor relay connecting her to the chosen one, wiped her memory and returned her to the earth. A new start. A last chance to understand. When she woke in the hospital, she remembered nothing, not even her name, and they began to watch through her eyes.

Everyone watched the visual and audio feed, but only the chosen one received all the sensory data. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. For the first time in his twenty three hundred years he felt something. The cold metallic edge of fear and a blanket of gray wretchedness began to cover him as it slid through the relay. He tried to shrug off the heaviness, but it only settled lower into his chest. The darkness formed itself into a ball and slipped between his clenched lips. The sound of sorrow shattered the silence of millennia. All eyes turned toward him with the same question swimming in their fathomless depths. How?

Thin fingers wrapped around an elongated neck, probing for understanding. Vocal chords unused for generations awakened at the first stirrings of emotion. One small moan and they throbbed with new pain, delighted to be needed again.

“I did not think, or take action to cause the sound. It happened in response to” there were no words in their vocabulary to describe the sensations, “what I feel.”

The relay works, but vocalization is unexpected. Keele, the expedition leader continued to study the chosen one.

The emotions are strong, heavy. I do not understand how humans can function with them. Even his mind voice quivered as the emotions continued to fill him.

Ketani, you are the chosen one. You will endure and you will decide the fate of this planet. We will enclose you for protection. Keele waved to those standing around, and Ketani felt himself being helped into a stasis room. The stark room curved around him like a womb, undulating in random patterns to sooth and comfort. The others set him gently on the floor and walked away. He tried to stand and follow them out, but the flood of emotions coming from the female weighed him down.

Please, I can not do this alone! Don’t leave me alone.

The door closed. In light of his own solitude, he began to understand the source of the female’s fear and anxiety. Once more his vocal chords vibrated with the sound of emotions too physically powerful to hold inside a thought.

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Two Wrongs

Author : Colin Edley

Nobody likes the guy who told you so being right, especially when the three day bender you went on after the girl he said was no good meant you couldn’t drag yourself out of bed except to phone him up and ask him to cover your shift.

So here I am on the graveyard shift while the rest of humanity patted each other on the back for the same kind of stupidity that nearly saw me without a job, well happy new year one and all.

Shame we’ll never see another, it started somewhere in the south pacific. I suppose it was as good a place as any, that and its the biggest body of water on the planet. We wouldn’t have spotted it so soon if the satellites hadn’t been watching the Caroline Islands being the first place to pass into the new decade.

There have been black tides before and oil slicks, but this one was circular and reflected nothing, not even the stars or the full moon directly above it. Boats and planes went first and then Hawaii, soon the circle was getting ready to shake hands with both seaboards of the pacific. Those hands met again at GMT on the equator thirty hours later right underneath where I’m sat. The guys on luna reckon it has to be almost totally entropic, once its been there is no hot, cold, high or low just a black stain spread over the billiard ball smoothness left in its wake.

How it got to Earth I don’t know, what made it I don’t know that either, one thing I do know is that they must have been a lot like me.

The only reason anybody makes something that destroys everything it touches is if they had already got something they couldn’t get rid of any other way.

Its just about eaten through the base of the tether, so luna this skyhook is about to become a spaceship until it eats that too…

At least I can take something with me, whatever made this thing made one more mistake than I did, one they messed up bad enough in the first place they had to make it to mop up after them, two they let it get out afterwards.

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Outlaw

Author : Q. B. Fox

The music for News Night faded from the surround-sound speakers. Robert waggled an outstretched finger towards the sensor on the TV and, on the second attempt, dragged the window containing the security camera feed to one side.

“Tonight,” the interviewer intoned, “we are speaking to the controversial Home Office Minister, John Simmons about recent legislation…”

Robert let his mind wander, watching the three figures, hoodies obscuring their faces, who stood in view of the camera that overlooked the front gate.

“But Mr. Simmons,” the interviewer sneered, “the Prisoners’ Rights Group is up in arms about this.”

“This is not about prisoners, is it?” countered the Minister. “The very name of the organisation shows that they are out of touch, both with our policy and public opinion.”

Robert was distracted again: one of the men at the front gate pointed directly into the camera, then at the control panel for the gate; he was saying something to his companions, but the security system did not carry audio.

Robert turned his attention back to the Minister.

“There is no longer room in our country’s prisons to hold every person convicted of a crime. Nor do the police have time to protect every scumbag, mugger or rapist…”

“Please, Minister, can we restrain the emotive language,” the interviewer interjected.

“This is an old solution to an old problem.” the Minister stated, calming himself. “Placing repeat criminals outside the protection of the law allows the public to protect themselves, the police to do their job and the treasury to save taxpayers’ money.”

“And they can no longer claim benefits or access health care?” the interviewer queried.

“Did you know that 80% of attacks on nurses are carried out by known offenders?” The Minister thumped his fist on the desk for emphasis.

Robert looked around the room, at the top of the range 110” television, at the Rembrandt sketch in the gold leaf frame and at the latest auto-barista. Then he looked back at the camera feed: one of the men was stabbing a finger at the screen of his mobile. Did he imagine that another, half in shadow, was cocking a gun?

On the TV, the interview continued.

“A citizen’s status is visible on any console,” the Minister justified. “There is no reason innocent people should become involved.”

Unconsciously Robert checked his own status in the bottom left of the display.

“Still green and clean,” he mumbled to himself.

“And how do you respond to accusations that this is a criminals’ charter;” the interviewer asked, “that it allows career criminals to target those already convicted without any fear of reprisal.”

“Live by the sword, die by the sword,” the Minister said emphatically. “Would you rather they targeted law abiding citizens?”

Outside, Robert noted, a man was now hunched over the gate’s control console, hands moving in quick, precise motions.

On the TV the interviewer was now holding up a copy of the Times, showing today’s headline: “CRIME BOSS CALLAGHAN TO BE SENTENCED”. Even though he’d been waiting for this, Robert was no longer listening; in the bottom left hand corner of the screen his status had changed from green to red.

Then the power cut, the TV was silent and everything was illuminated by the soft, red glow of the emergency lights.

Robert Callaghan stood, lifted the pump action shotgun from the table and cocked it.

But the whole time he stared at the now-blank screen, stared at where a single yellow word had been, block capitals on the red background of his status box. That word had been OUTLAW.

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The Future Soon

Author : Neil Shurley

“Will you just cool it about the jet pack?”

It was all I could do not to shout at him. Barry’s daily tirade against the state of the world left me feeling nothing but tired. Ever since New Year’s Day he’d go off for at least ten minutes every morning about the alleged lies he grew up on, about the lack of domed cities, flying cars and jet packs.

“Can you say redundancy?” I continued. “If your rocket goes out when you’re flying through the air at 80 miles an hour, how are you going to do anything but crash land? Splat, Barry.” I grabbed a raisin out of my bowl and squished it for emphasis. “Splat. Right on your moving sidewalk.”

Barry drained the coffee from his Mystery Science Theater 3000 mug, then took another bite of pie.

“Can we just accept it now?” I said. “We got the future we got. We’re going to have to just make do with it. And look at the good side. No nuclear holocaust. No robot rebellion. No super-intelligent apes taking over. It’s all good, right?”

Barry scraped the remaining cherry filling off of his plate. “So you’re saying I should be happy there’s no jet pack in my garage?”

“First off, you don’t have a garage.”

“I’d keep it in the closet. With my coats.”

“Where would you keep the fuel? You’d have to buy it by the barrel. And rocket fuel ain’t cheap, my friend.”

“Mister Fusion,” he said. “We were promised nuclear fusion. It would totally run on that.”

I just shook my head and slurped the sugary milk out of my bowl.

Barry slid his plate into the table slot and double-tapped his mug. He warmed his hand over the steaming coffee.

“What about the moonbase, Chad? Where’s our moonbase?”

“Hey, at least we didn’t blow the moon out of orbit with our spent fuel rods.”

“Pppft. Give me a break. We should have hotels on the moon by now. And you know it.”

I shook my head and sighed.

“Fine,” I said. “You’re right. We were screwed.”

“That’s all I’m saying.”

I double-tapped my temple and tweeted to my 14,608 followers: “Barry says we’re screwed. What a moron. He hasn’t had a positive thing to say since he turned 107.”

“Hey,” Barry said. ”I see that.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I said, staring through the windshield as we shot past endless green fields. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

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Ding

Author : James Riley

“Oof!” Miller grunted, raising the bar for John to take it. He exhaled deeply and sat up. John casually dropped the weight onto the maglev lifts and patted his friend on the back.

“Think that’ll do it?” John asked.

“Should. . .” Miller replied, tapping his left forearm twice. A pale blue display appeared on his skin. A graphic was rotating and a box of text popped up that read “Updating. Please wait.” Expectation began to stir within him.

A faint vibration on his forearm indicated that the calculation was complete. Miller watched a cherry red bar slide from left to right on the display. He urged it forward. There was just a bit further for it to go. . . and. . . a loud metallic chime was emitted from the display and rang through the gym. It was wholly satisfying, like taking a long drink of water after waking up in the middle of the night. “Ding,” Miller said, grinning widely.

“Grats,” John said, giving him a high five. Several other weightlifters echoed John’s congratulation. Miller’s strength level was now 42, almost where he wanted it to be.

His display buzzed and he looked down. A message had popped up in a small square toward his elbow, “Just reminding you about our date tonight–Marina.” A heart graphic pulsed below the text. Miller smiled again and headed to the showers, he didn’t want to be late.

For hours the sun had been setting, but Marina and Miller, walking hand in hand, never noticed. Part of the reason they didn’t was that the light posts lining the street had been smoothly illuminating, little by little, to compensate for the waning sunlight, but mostly it was due to the fact that they were having so much fun together.

As they were walking Marina was telling a story about how her shoes got stuck in a vent that day at work forcing her to walk around barefoot for the rest of the day. In between laughs Miller quickly glanced down at his display. Tonight’s date pushed the little bar forward that measured their relationship. He wasn’t surprised. He had ordered Eggplant Parmesan, her favorite, for her at the restaurant, given her his coat when they went for a walk, and had even complimented her new shoes— Miller had done everything a good boyfriend should. And each correct decision had automatically been given a value and recorded.

Soon, they reached Marina’s apartment. “Oh,” she said, before opening the door, “Julie’s engagement party is next month. Want to be my date?”

Miller chuckled. “Want to? Nah. Boring small talk with people I don’t know isn’t my thing. But I’ll come, because I know it’s what you want, and that’s what good boyfriends do,” he continued.

“But you’d rather not come?” she asked, her tone cool.

“No, to be honest, but I will, because it’ll make you happy.” He hadn’t noticed her demeanor change because he was glancing at his display. Sure enough, his willingness to do something he didn’t want to for her sake caused the relationship bar to inch forward. According to the meter, Marina should be elated with him. He looked up from his arm, though, just in time to see her slam her front door in his face.

Miller stood for a moment, his mouth slightly agape. The meter indicated Marina’s happiness with him should be at a peak. He snorted. “Stupid thing’s broken again,” he muttered, shutting the display off by punching his arm so hard that he made himself wince.


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