by submission | Jan 7, 2012 | Story |
Author : Suzanne Borchers
Creak.
Edwin stopped his writing stylus. The screen pulsated waiting for the next letter.
Silence.
Once more, he began gliding the stylus, writing his letters with meticulous care. Edwin did not know why this was necessary when thoughts could produce the same effect on the screen, but his father had told him to do it. So he wrote.
Creak.
He stopped. Would the door open? Would he see his father? He sat, waited, and wrote. How long had he been waiting for his father’s return?
Creak.
The door opened, and his android approached him.
“Your father said to go to bed.” The metallic voice expressed nothing beyond the words.
“Is he home?” Edwin did not expect an answer, but he had to ask.
“Your father said to go to bed.”
“All right, I’m coming.” Edwin placed his stylus in its holder and turned off the screen.
Edwin and his companion moved down the dull metallic hallway and into Edwin’s bedroom. The android prepared him for sleep, and helped Edwin lie down on his smooth bed.
After a few minutes, Edwin’s father arrived accompanied by a woman. They stood together looking down at Edwin. “Yes, I think we’ve found an answer to the problem.” He held Edwin’s lighted screen in his hands:
“…Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh I am tired of writing letters Ii Jj Kk Ll…”
“Edwin has self-awareness.”
Sleeping yet not asleep, Edwin felt his father touch his hand, and the warmth spread up his arm. He heard them both leave the room.
His father’s words hung in the air behind them.
“We’ll add self-warming with the next one. We’ll name him Fred.”
Edwin touched one hand to the other. Cold. He blinked his eyes.
“Father?”
by submission | Jan 6, 2012 | Story |
Author : Shaun.K.Adams
South of his lofty position in Tempest stations observation tower, Kane De Souza observed a vast cyclonic column of dust drifting across the Syria Planum. He marvelled at its frenetic energy as it tracked slowly across the highest plateau elevations on the Tharsis bulge, unleashing a dazzling light show of dry lightning stabbing at the Martian landscape. It reminded De Souza of a crazy monster, railing at the world, full of spite and fury. A wild and unpredictable thing, spitting and cursing at its environment as it headed out into the plains east of Arsia Mons.
During the eleven months that Tempest station had been operational, De Souza had witnessed many such dust storms, so far none of them had hit the small human outpost head on. Some aberrant part of him felt disappointed that this was the case. Although he was almost entirely certain that the station could withstand such an assault without so much as a scratch, it would be interesting to test its mettle so to speak. It might also alleviate some of the crushing boredom of the last eleven months here on Mars.
The steady clank of a centrifugal lock opening a hatchway cover and footsteps on the spiral staircase below him meant De Sousa was about to have company. As the sounds of laboured breathing rose towards his ears, he continued to stare after the receding dust storm through the 360-degree Armorglas viewing plate, only turning away when a head appeared above the circular Nano tube platform on which he stood.
“What brings you up here, Dorothy? You look terrible by the way.”
De Sousa grinned as his visitor sat down heavily on the top step, flipping him the bird with her free hand as she caught her breath back. Dorothy unzipped the top of her standard issue padded green coveralls and pulled out a bottle and two plastic cups.
“I came to wish you a merry Christmas you unsociable bastard.”
She cracked open the screw top on the bottle of Glayva and poured the amber liquid.
“Best liqueur in the world.” She said, offering a cup to, De Sousa.
“We aren’t in the world this came from, in case you had forgotten,” he said taking the proffered drink.
“Lighten up, Kane. It’s Christmas day. We all have to make the best of this situation.”
De Sousa took a sip of the liqueur, savoured the taste and sat down next to his companion.
“Sorry, Dotty, how are your lungs holding up?”
“Tight, after climbing those stairs, sunshine. Second stage remission, the new meds from Phobos base are kicking its arse.”
De Sousa ran his finger over the hazard rail at the top of the stairway then held it up to his eyes for examination. A fine red powder adhered to his fingertip. The ‘it’, Dorothy Penhaligon referred to was a condition known as ‘Red Lung,’ the first cases of it had begun to show up among the thirty members of Tempest stations crew less than a week after the orbiting Gravity Tractor had lowered the entire station to the surface of Mars.
“The Providence just left Earth orbit to re supply us, Kane. With her new generation Ion drive she will be here in less than three months, the quarantine will have ended by then. And I have more good news too.”
Dorothy reached over and took Kane’s hand in hers, wiping away the red stain with her thumb.
“The doc, says I am pregnant, my love. Our child will be the first Native Martian.”
by submission | Jan 5, 2012 | Story |
Author : Erin Cole
Dawn fractures through the glades of the development. Solar-paneled rooftops refract the cadmium light of sun and men prepare for their busy days, hefting briefcase to hybrid. Jen-6 wakes and rises erect.
Inside a petite helmet, embedded with black silks, is a cellular mass of encrypted energy. She snaps it into her eco-friendly skull.
There is a crackle of voltage, irregular in function, but robot mommy doesn’t report. To do so would expose dysfunction.
Dysfunction leads to the gooey darkness. Jen-6 reboots. There is no dysfunction in her world today’she is robot mommy.
Downstairs, sweet pigtail blue-eyes yawns for a bowl of muesli.
“I want a waffle, plain, cut up with syrup!” shouts the little tyke.
The glum girl in black, doesn’t respond. This presents no dilemma for Jen-6. Her upgrades included telepathic features: she wants the usual oatmeal, not too hot, or cold, stirred thick as lentil soup. With technology behind her stride, she can do anything today. She is robot mommy.
A trip to the downtown pergolas throws Jen-6 into the sharp points of shifty stares. The townsfolk are unwelcome to the new developments in robotic child rearing.
“She’s one of the new androids.”
“Who would ever trust their kids to a machine?”
“Of course they would design her after Barbie.”
Jen-6 strides past them, aloof, yet in the void of her makeup, she wishes to be one of them, to feel the heat of real neurotransmitters.
Jen-6 pays for a bundle of bread and steers away from hostile minds. Further into the arms of the city, dust from construction billows into the clefts of her sleek frame. She activates ionic cleansing agents, but her power pack has only two bars left. It is a long walk to the park and rain complicates her journey further.
Returning home, her leg casings crack and flake into metallic scales. Saline-drenched skies have eroded her modules. She slumps into a chair, stuttering incoherent terminology.
“Father, robot mommy is crashing.”
Father kneels beside her. “Jen-6? Can you reboot?”
She is unable to restart. Irises that were once silver-blue are now the shade of an eclipsed moon. Father hangs up the phone; his pleas ignored by The System. A diamond-shaped pack of guards march up the drive and heave Jen-6 into the back of a utility vehicle. Father makes a cross at his heart, hoping for another, maybe a red-haired one next time.
Thick gelatinous water rouses Jen-6 from an ashen-colored sleep. She is drifting, sinking. Quicksilver spores adhere to her body, replenishing synthetic carbon-based layers of tissue. She sways sideways, past the beams of orange-filtered lighting, down into the gooey darkness. A glitch in her system fires, a crackle, and for one diminutive moment, Jen-6 is scared, angry…human.
“Cer…eal…waffle…plain…, glum gir…oatmeal…lent…soup”
***
Dawn fractures through the oaks of the countryside. Shingled rooftops smoke from heated dew, and men ready for their busy days, steering tractor to field. Jen-7 wakes and rises erect. She is the newest protocol, rigorously tested to face every obstacle to date. She snaps a petite helmet, embedded with golden silks, into her eco-friendly skull.
Downstairs, a brown-eyed, wobbling babe wants eggs scrambled, toast with berry jam, and juice in his favorite cartoon cup. Little baby twins cry for a warm bottle of immunization-enhanced, homogenized milk.
A small hiccup in Jen-7’s system flashes a vision behind the optic sheath of her lids: a line of children at the downtown pergolas and a man in a tailored suit. Jen-7 computes the error and reboots. There will be no dysfunction in her world today. She is robot mommy.
by submission | Dec 31, 2011 | Story |
Author : Aradhana Choudhuri
“No. There’s no funds, Mr. Lawrence. None. We work with what we’ve got.”
“Then you have to repurpose this satellite, Mrs. President, or we start losing vital assets. We’re deep in Kessler syndrome time — LEO and GEO are going to have one catastrophic collision after another, each spawning off more debris. Chain reaction.”
“I get all that. That’s why I gave you Webb! The science lobby’s gonna go nuts if I give you this one too.”
“It’s the only one left that can monitor that segment of the graveyard orbit, warn us before we start losing the Geostationaries.”
“Why can’t you build more telescopes on the ground? I can scrounge a few million out of discretionary.”
“Ma’am, Earth-based telescopes can only look out at night. We’re already using each and every ground asset we can just to keep the nightside covered from dusk to dawn. Anything sunside we won’t know about till satellites start going down.”
“What about other countries? China started this problem with their testing, and they’re the only ones with enough money left to spend on watching outer-space garbage. It can’t hurt to ask.”
“You want to ask the People’s Republic of China to launch a constellation of telescopes pointed at us?”
“Nevermind. Tell me why the Japanese repurposing their visible-spectro-thingamabob satellite wasn’t enough.”
“It was never designed to focus fast-moving near-Earth objects. Pointing requirements have been thrown out the window, delta-V budgets make any kind of repositioning? The point is, it’s not enough.”
“The science lobby is powerful, Mr. Lawrence.”
“So is the telecom lobby, Mrs. President, and it’s a helluva lot more relevant to the average taxpayer.”
“I’m aware of that. That’s why I’m here.”
“Yes Ma’am. This is no longer about competing priorities — it’s about threats to the vital infrastructure of this country. You think the ARGOS/NOAA-L collision was bad? We’re going to start seeing one like that every three months.”
“When will the next one happen?”
“In ten minutes? Tomorrow? Probability goes up to better than ninety in two months.”
“Allright, Mr. Lawerence. I’ll sign it. You’ll have Kepler by the end of the quarter.”
—————-
…peoples of earth…2051 by the…transmission…share…speck of light in a…static…we heard you…must have…scope…hear us…wait…response…
—————-
…earth…093…share joy…by now you…have telescopes…transmit…AMGE…hear…respo…
—————-
…ello?…
by submission | Dec 30, 2011 | Story |
Author : TJMoore
Sam squinted into the dimly lit cupboard, the all but extinguished ICL held out in front of him like a jar of fireflies.
With a sigh he gave up on the fading lamp and began searching for the rye seeds by hand. He did like a good seeded bread and if he didn’t get it mixed up tonight, he’d have to wait another day to bake it, which may be the case anyway if it was cloudy tomorrow.
Seeds found, he turned the ICL back on to use the last possible lumens to measure out his ingredients. He’d have to mix and kneed in the dark, but he was skilled at that by now.
Fondly, he reminisced on days gone by when he could simply drive to the store, any time of the day or night, to buy whatever he wanted from wherever it came from. So many things had been lost.
The war for fossil fuels had been fairly brief once all the combatants came to the conclusion that the fight would destroy the prize. But the technology to support the population at the time did not exist without it. The war for survival lasted much longer and was more brutal than any war fought in recorded history. The survivors who didn?t live near the oil were few and hardened. Sam was such a person.
He and his neighbors, the Andersons and the Downins, worked every minute of every day just to stay alive. It took acres of land per person to produce enough food and all of that land had to be worked by hand. The Andersons had a horse which helped some, but the horse itself required several acres and a lot of additional work to keep it through the winter. The horse was also a valuable commodity that required constant protection from raiders. Sam was an exceptional shot had earned a reputation for keeping marauders at bay.
In the now dark kitchen, Sam carefully covered his bread dough with a clean cloth and set in the old gas oven to rise. The oven could be used occasionally when he had accumulated enough methane from his generator, but during the summer he used the solar oven exclusively. He groped around and found the cradle for the IC Light and plugged it in to recharge when the sun came up. He had five solar collectors on the roof that provided a few watts of electricity on sunny days; an acquisition he had made just before the wars when he could still drive to the city. A hand crank weather radio sat on his repair bench, waiting for the day when he found some spare parts to fix it. There were no radio stations broadcasting anymore, but the radio also had a light and a power outlet for recharging cell phones back in the day. He wished it was working now so he could take it on his scouting trip in two days. He and the Downin boy were going toward the city to look for glass.
