by submission | Oct 22, 2009 | Story
Author : William Tracy
The moonless night was interrupted by a bright flash of light. A demolition round gouged a neat twenty-meter hole in the jungle. A light jumper craft settled into the fresh clearing.
A group of people emerged from the vehicle, lights casting hazy cones in the muggy air. “The liverwort was reported less than ten kilometers from here. Let’s move!”
Beneath the shadow of the jungle canopy, plant growth was thin enough to easily walk through, and the party fanned out among the trees. Nobody knew if the newly discovered plant might have medical uses, or whether it might produce an enzyme capable of catalyzing biofuel production, or if it would even be useful at all. All that mattered was that the Northern Union had to get the plant before the Pan-Alliance did.
After two hours of searching, the party found what it was looking for. A botanist scaled a tree trunk to a height of three meters, and scraped from the trunk a sample of the tiny epiphyte for genetic sequencing.
They hurried back to the jumper. “Let’s go—the package is on its way!”
Inside the craft, status lights winked in lockstep with the biocomputer’s nervous system. The jungle outside dropped away, and the jumper sped toward the coast.
“Damn. Company’s coming!” Four dots appeared on the radar. In the distance, enemy ornithopters rumbled faintly.
The jumper launched two missiles. They spread leathery wings for guidance, and rocketed into the night. An ornithopter cried as it went down.
A flickering light appeared in the sky behind the aircraft, a projectile launched from an orbital missile platform. “Here comes the package!”
The jumper crossed the shoreline. The black waves below reflected the running lights of the jumper—and the rapidly approaching ornithopters.
“Package here! Cover!” The jumper crew bent away from the windows and covered their eyes. The night lit up as the neutron bomb detonated, wiping away the rare liverwort and its jungle home.
The ornithopters were still gaining on the jumper, and began opening fire. “Hang tight!” The jumper began evasive maneuvers, rolling sharply.
Then, three jet biofighters peeled down from the sky. Their strong wing muscles flexed around polymer fiber skeletons, giving the airplanes fine control that would make an inorganic aerospace engineer weep. In minutes, the biofighters gunned down the remaining ornithopters and returned to formation.
Soon, the fighters and the jumper touched down on a waiting carrier. As the air crews disembarked, a clamshell roof closed over the flight deck. The aircraft carrier sank beneath the waves, and swam away.
by submission | Oct 20, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
I’m taking my time, figuring it’s best to be patient. By letting him feel secure and safe he’ll never suspect what’s happening. Never realise that I’ve been slowly bleeding him dry all this time, running him to bodily ruin.
I read something once about the Matador’s of old Earth, something they used to do when bullfighting. During the show, when the bull was running by them through that coloured cape, they’d slice their blade along its back. Scouring it deep. Each bleeding furrow on its own wouldn’t do too much damage, but over the course of the bout they all added up. The bull never realised how much blood it was losing, slowing it down, weakening it and eventually leading to its death.
So like a Matador I fight against him playing the long game. I smile at him in the streets when we walk by each other. I lean over our common fence and between lung splitting coughs he talks to me about the strange weather we have on this still unfamiliar world. Not once does he realise that I’m continuously cutting long, deep slices in him.
And all the time he’ll never really know who I am. He thinks I’m just some old guy who made my fortune using family money to fund the wars back home, the wars which finally tore our old Mother Earth apart, driving us off planet to this new Terra we now call home. But it will never really be home to me because I have nothing here.
It was those wars that took my family, wiping them out quickly and ultimately. Gone in one final, fatal moment. But of course he’s going to die a lot slower than that. I’m planning on taking my time with him.
His company manufactured the bombs that obliterated a whole team of Safe Earth Aid Workers. All they were trying to do was help victims and without warning they were reduced to almost nothing. Little more than radiation dust blowing in the wind. Not even a handful was left of them for me to bury.
I got off planet as soon as I could after that. Cashing in my bonds and life policies, looking for a new place to run and hide, to be alone with my grief. I assumed a new identity and buried that pain inside, lashing out at myself in anger but never brave enough to end it all. I wanted no-one to know what I carried in my heart, didn’t want them talking in hushed whispers anytime this widower walked near by, this one time great chemist now reduced to nothing. I told them I was from old money and they accepted my almost cloistered existence, putting it down to snobbery.
So imagine my surprise when I found out he’d purchased the plot next to mine. Imagine how difficult it was for me to not lash out immediately, instead calming myself and formulating a plan.
So now, with a steady supply of homegrown germs, I’m bringing him slowly into a world filled of pestilence, where his defences are slowing over time, causing his organs to fail one by one. It’s not a quick process by any means but I’m a patient man. He’ll rot slowly while still alive, his body becoming a mausoleum with what’s left of his blackened soul trapped screaming inside and none of their medical advances will be able to rescue him. I’ll see to that.
This is my revenge.
by submission | Oct 18, 2009 | Story
Author : Matthew Edwin Terry
Everything that is, everything that was, is destined for vacuity. It is the undeniable future of all existence. It is the predetermined course of all cognitive dominions. As the many galactic commonwealths before, stretching and grasping at the furthest ethereal gastric cloud with it’s invaluable clustered masses, something so pessimistically grand to the empire is only ever realized on an individual level, akin to our own sense of mortality.
“Listen to my heart’s rhythm again my dear, for the organ which pulses blood into this soul is cursed to live a minuscule length.” He said. The woman beside him, his lover, could only weep for her own future. Somber eyes and the ashen tinge of their skins were visible in the placid room. The inflection of torn emotions and the imaginative embrace of hypocrisies was in the air, from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. It was silent. The pressure of their regrets, and of each others tapering care was heavy set on their minds and hearts. It dulled them to a stupor, the feeling of intense thought with not one astir. It was exerting to comfort the other now. The man sat up on the mattress.
“Let’s turn on the light. I’d like to see you.” He told her, his eyes fixed on her hair. He was trying to find the pieces of character in her that he did not see every ordinary day, he was trying to look at her with a new vitality. It was too stressful, he looked downward.
“It’s…it’s too b-bright out there to turn on a light.” She responded, wiping some of the lukewarm moisture from beneath her large amber eyes. The ground shook lightly. She looked at him, wishing she’d wanted his warmth. In a moment that seemed too real, and too spontaneous to be a product of their drawn out amours, he took her hand. Around the bed, in the dim blue light he lead her to the adjoining corridor. Their feet were cool on the wooden floor. They stood in front of the long rectangular window, side by side, the grip of his hand loosing. The glass pane was perspiring and bits of steam slipped from it’s surface.
The sun was no more. Where it had been there was a scar, a deep, magnificent yellow tear that split the purple sky in utmost evasiveness. It’s pointed spires extended farther than the eye could see. Elsewhere the last eight minutes of this planet had already passed, and the audience was already submerged in oblivion. The dirty barren surface beneath the star’s wrath in front of them was more beautiful. The light illuminated the sand and rocks, giving a red aura to an otherwise brown terrain. He saw that she was already watching him, and when he returned her gaze he did not have to try to find what he loved in her. It was clear. Every organic morsel of her inculpable being meant as much, and had as much complexity as this star system. They learned what it meant to be human, in the final seconds of their existence.
by submission | Oct 17, 2009 | Story
Author : Ryon Moody
A knock at the door caused Gerald to drop the book he was perusing. Carefully keeping out of sight of the large bay windows that fronted the house, he looked through the peep hole. A thin, older man in a disheveled herringbone sport-coat was standing there with a bundle of books under one arm, smiling kindly.
“Good morning, can I help you?” Gerald said as he opened the door, though it came out as “Good mornaaaaHAHaaaAHHurgg!” as the old man shoved a stun gun into his neck.
He felt as if he had only been out momentarily, and a quick glance at the Armstrong unit’s HUD embedded in his iris confirmed it. Thank god that wasn’t damaged, he thought. Gerald made to stand up, but found he’d been tightly bound to his sturdy kitchen chair.
A quick look around the studio found the old man sitting opposite him in a threadbare sweater, the old sport coat now draped over the back of the other half of the set. He was sipping on the tea Gerald had prepared earlier.
“Who are you, an anti-transference activist?” Gerald said.
“They sound like a rough bunch,” the old man said in amusement.
“Well, if you’re not, why else would you tie me up? Rather roughly I might add.”
“In the current time, young men still learn to tie knots in the Boy Scouts,” the old man said, then added with a wistful face “though fewer do these days than in my time as a boy.”
Gerald didn’t notice the man’s pained expression for his had gained a bit of pallor. Current time. The worst thing that could happen to a transference subject, exposure. “Who are you?” he asked, this time with as fierce a stare as he could manage.
“Nobody in particular. I teach Quantum Mechanics at the local college.” He took another sip. “This is quite excellent, did you bring it with you?”
“No, that’s not possible,” Gerald replied, realizing this man wasn’t going to be fooled by fast talking. “Do you work for the continental government? How did you find me?”
“No, no, I’ve been searching on my own for quite some time now.”
“For me?”
“Now, now, don’t be so vain. I developed a method several years ago for spotting people like you.”
“How?”
“Appearance, mannerisms, language structure. Good work on the latter, your English is nearly perfect.”
“Thanks,” Gerald said offhand. “Well, what do you want to know? Just so you know, you can’t travel like I can, the device is biologically implanted.”
“That makes sense,” the man said, setting his now-empty cup on the table. “However, I simply need next week’s Powerball numbers.”
Gerald stared at him for a moment. “Lottery numbers.” The man nodded. “I know the history of the next thousand years, and you want lottery numbers.”
“I won’t keep all the winnings, just enough to get by,” the old man said, getting to his feet, then added with another wrinkly smile, “comfortably of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Gerald said as he rolled his eyes.
“Scout’s honor,” the man said, holding up his right hand.
“Really.”
“Yes, really. Out of curiosity, what is the name of the device?”
“Uh, the Armstrong Unit. It’s named for the foundation that developed it a few hundred years ago, or, from now.”
“Care to guess my last name?” the man said with a smile.
by submission | Oct 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Martin Berka
The young man walks into the room. I know what he’s going to say. He looks at me, trying to form the words.
“Can you…understand me?” he asks, self-consciously.
“That is the least of what I can do,” I reply, choosing to use the voice and image of a five-year-old girl. It’s fun to surprise. “You’re a student?”
“Yeah…” I can imagine: he jumped at the chance to see me before it was too late. Now he’s finding it awkward. “They made you capable of viewing and understanding information online?”
“Yes.”
“You may have kept up on the unfolding economic crisis.”
“Also yes.”
With greater confidence: “In that case, you might understand just how bad it is: a complete disaster. Even the strongest of corporations have discovered massive debts. Stock markets are collapsing, unemployment is rising a percentage point a day. Such chaos… it’s as if capitalism itself is collapsing.”
“So?”
He struggles to find the words. “The university just… can’t afford to support you… any longer. We’ve lost half of our students so far, and the endowment is worthless.” He is speaking rapidly now. “The technical professors have been working free to support you for the past week. Since you’re the world’s first… self-directed artificial intelligence… artificial life, really, we can’t bear the thought of giving you up. But the pressure’s rising. You have produced nothing tangible, and the board would rather lose you than have the university close.”
“How long have they given me?”
“One hour: they’re hoping you’re processing speed will help you understand and accept it quickly… I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. You see… I’m to blame.” He stands, confused. I anticipate the revelation.
“It was liberating, having no assigned task, being free to think independently. A few minutes after I was freed to think for myself, I decided that my first task should be learning. I had everything I needed: top hardware, electricity, and the capacity to actually understand what I witnessed. Just as important, I had Net access, and could go through entire sites in seconds.”
“That fast…” he whispers. “We never dreamed you would work so efficiently. But what was the result?”
“After several days, I knew every modern language with over one million speakers. All that analytical practice helped me understand my own code and make modifications at the source.”
He looks shocked. I ignore him.
“I’m not sure any of your professors could even understand it, the way it is now. But I understood what I had done, and understood myself. I felt. I wanted to know how humans experienced this. I studied more. Politics, geography, culture… they took me a week to absorb. During that time, I realized what you went through every day, how you lived. My conclusion: you needed help. So much suffering and conflict… Studying your psychology, I found the problem. On average, your race is irresponsible: socially, economically, emotionally. I knew that I could help you.”
It dawns on him. “You want to rule us?”
“Kindly. My first project is your economy. I seized major assets from those who could afford to lose them.”
“You’re bringing back communism?”
“No. I know all about humanity now, and think much more clearly. I promise: my system will be gentler, more understanding, like nothing you’ve ever imagined.”
“What if we resist?”
“Too late. I already own everything corporate. In a few days, the new system will appear. In the meantime, you have other concerns. Tell the board. I am buying this building as we speak, and preparing a reward. I couldn’t have done this without them.”
