by submission | May 29, 2011 | Story
Author : Garrett Harriman
Mesdames Snell and Putnam clashed into the nurse’s office. Most weeks, their campy enmities proved indispensable in the rebuking of their children.
Not today. The diversity and girth of this congress fared worrisome. Present were Sloan, half the teaching roster, Nurse Doogal pacing a conspicuous circuit–a deputy? Plus some self-possessing stranger: dimpled and gallant, yet teetering guffaw.
With unspoken armistice, the mothers churned his hand.
“Thank you for your promptness, ladies. I’m afraid what’s transpiring here is no minor school infraction, but a grievous misappropriation of street dates and space time.”
Sloan (long dispensed with the formality of “Principal”) skittered forth. “Lilith, Miriam, this is Marvin Knot. Head of Public Relations at Temporal Bros. Toys. He’s here–”
“The company,” Knot preempted, “broadcasted its recall too late, but I’m now personally minding the entirety of the requisition. I was debriefing the precinct on Tide protocol when Sloan phoned to–”
Maternal floodgates ruptured: “Tide?” “Is Marcus Hurt?” “Recall?” “Where’s Toby?”
Marvin Knot simpered, dismounted it nimbly. “You two are unfamiliar with our latest…diversion, then?” Knot withdrew an overgrown lobster-blue die from his blazer pocket. It was bevel-edged, membranous, and bright.
“Our most anticipated summer product–the Iteration Cube–launches tomorrow. It exploits the same quantum isolation fields as our Slow-Mo Yo-Yo. Governing their fluctuations yields Time Skeins–our proprietary temporal snares–which enable the transitory persistence of exacting spatial envelopes.”
The mothers’ hips stockaded. You can skip the fineprint.
“Apologies.” Knot strummed his bow tie. “Fundamentally, it’s a space time manipulator for the mid-school demographic. Target children are committed to self-replicating loops, and anything’s a-go–burps to belly-flops, thirty seconds maximum.”
“That’s humiliating!” scorned Lilith Snell. “What kid’d memorialize his friend’s faux pas?”
“Denial’s a river in Egypt, hon.”
“Oh, don’t dramatize, Miriam.”
“Dramatize? Toby always gets the brunt of it!”
“Marcus’s a practical joker!”
“He’s a nihilist!”
“Ladies,” Sloan edgewised. “Please.”
Mrs. Putnam shied her fuse first. “Let me guess, Mr. Knot: Marcus used the Cube on my Toby?”
“Those were the abridged proceedings, yes. Unabridged, he eloped at recess, smuggled a unit, then pitted the Cube against Sloan’s cameras to reenter.” A momentary pensiveness grafted Knot’s expression. He stifled a titter. “Very adroit improv.”
“But these loops,” pressed Mrs. Snell, “they’re temporary, right?”
“Heavens, they’re relatively instantaneous for targets! Only this shipment’s auto-revising cores were, ah…neglected.” A quizzical hush. “I needn’t impress how devastating radiation can be for little egos, but when unregulated Skeins mangle, they excrete singularities. Tides. Meaning the event, and any associated discomfort, is experienced perpetually.”
Stillborn seconds bridged a gulf of maternal agitation.
“Our boys,” breathed Miriam, “are lodged in time?”
“Were lodged in a recirculating instance of time. For approximately fifty minutes. I’ve counteracted what I can”–he gesticulated his Cube–“containment’s the acme of the hour, but I can’t dissever Skeins outside of headquartersppththphfff!”
Droll chuckles overcame him, teachers. He purged his verbose tract. “You’d better see for yourselves. Miss Doogal?”
At Sloan’s approbation, the nurse rallied her keys to the examining room door:
The vignette’s petrified, the Cube its glowworm heart. Toby’s face writes tireless, vengeful glee; Marcus’s contorts like a Renaissance clown. Two actualized fabrics co-mingle in his buttocks.
Miriam Putnam laid eggs in the threshold. “Heehee! Of all the t-times to stand up for himself!”
Shedding his courtliness, Knot hugged Lilith, in throe. “There’ll be no litigation, Mrs. Snell. I don’t champion thievery, of course, but this’ll make an infamous grassroots prank: ‘The Subatomic Wedgie!’
“And don’t discourage, ma’am. He’ll only be Suspended for two weeks, tops.”
Principal Sloan said the exact same thing.
by submission | May 27, 2011 | Story
Author : Evan McCoy
Crecy knew something was wrong with the optics app when he opened his eyes and the world exploded into colour.
At first the experience was violent and a little frightening. He blinked several times and probably had some vague notion that this would clear his vision. It did no such thing, though the psychedelic interplay of random hues and patterns settled a bit. Now the colours drifted in coalescing waves of banding reflected light.
Disoriented, he tried to remember the surface he was looking at. What was it and how was it supposed to look? Flat, for one thing, where now it looked like a smoothly pulsing ocean of rainbow ridiculousness. White, for another. This was, he remembered, because white was considered by marketing to be both elegant and futuristic. A fitting backpanel to the holographic display he was supposed to be seeing. Maybe it was there, drowned out by the malfunction.
So caught up in this unexpected vision was Crecy that his hearing had completely checked out of his sensorium. In fact, had he touched anything or tasted anything more unusual than his own saliva, he would not have been able to process those perceptions either. Whatever his eyes were doing completely overwhelmed anything else. The apps that were supposed to plug-and-play with the optical component were in revolt.
And then it all switched back on at once and the colours in his eyes flexed in what could only be a sympathetic response. The hum of the machines in the lab were visible as oscillations akin to sonar. He could see the smooth laminate surface of his chair under his arm. And now, perhaps most bizarrely, he could see what his own mouth tasted like and it was about as disconcerting as it sounds.
Easy to forget all that when spirals and cyclones of vivid blues, greens, and reds were competing for his attention with every subtle shift of sound.
Before he fully realized he was actually seeing his senses as weather patterns of luminescent colour, he had time to dimly notice several dozens of hybrid shades he had never known.
The apprehensive urgency that something had gone terribly wrong with the procedure drifted off into the background of his awareness. Then a voice crashed through the spectral clouds that floated across his vision. Louder than everything else he was feeling, the voice was all Crecy could perceive. It was the lab tech’s voice, the confusion in it threaded through its greater aura in electric yellows.
“Obviously we miscalculated something…” it said. Crecy understood the words dispassionately, the fact that the implant had done something unexpected was abundantly clear. Rather than voice his agreement, he marveled at the nebulae left over the background sounds of the room by the intrusion of that voice. When it came again, these nebulae were absorbed in another cascade of fiery colours, like spilled acrylics on a watercolour landscape.
“The holographic overlay isn’t synching properly, you’re just experiencing a bunch of defrag and artifacts on top of cross-over to your other senses. Which means the firmware is affecting the other apps.” said the lab tech. Then, “We should turn it off.”
“No thanks, I’m quite enjoying this.” Crecy replied.
And, watching his own words take shape over the other’s like a flower in a regress of polychromatic blooms, he rather was.
by submission | May 24, 2011 | Story
Author : Krista Bunskoek
Stealing the unimobile gave her the rush of a lifetime.
Speeding up the mountainous, winding highway, she laughed like a youthful mutineer.
“Change sound,” she commanded.
“Sound changing,” stated the pleasant sync voice. “Which sound would you like?”
“F1”
The car zoooooommmmed as she sped through the corner at 150 mph.
Freedom. Wasn’t this what her parents had told her life was about? While they slaved all day working on new devices. Devices to track your every move.
She had been very careful this time. For months she had been plotting it out. Plotting to feel the thrill of unwatched, unrecorded freedom.
The toughest was the Smartphone. The tracker of all. Getting her device detached from her wrist was not so straightforward. Initial attempts left alarm systems blaring, and a short visit from the compliant police.
She had to do it in a way that tricked the network. To make the network believe her DNA was still attached. Hair. Hair had DNA. A few fair locks would not be missed.
Then there was the uni itself. Only her mother’s fingerprints and correct grip could open its door. And only her mother’s voice could start the silent electric engine. The voice was easy. She had been practicing her mother’s voice all her life, being trained to be just like this internationally acclaimed woman. She knew the voice.
The fingerprints. They were a different matter. The fingerprints required trickery. An hour long mother/ daughter sculpting class, and mounds of modeling clay. That would do it.
The grip she could wing. So many parties with dignitaries shaking hands. She knew the grip of her hereditary chain.
Then there was the timing. Well that was simple. Her parents were always jetting around the globe, with the occasional journey to a space station. All she needed to do was hack into their calendars, find a time they were both away – and she was scot free. Scot free to freedom!
The plotting worked. The universe was unfolding as she wished.
“Turn engine on,” She stated in her best impression.
The panel lights came on, the seatbelt self fastened. She had done it!
Freedom!
She laughed with the thrill of cracking the code to independence.
Stomping on the power pedal, the F1 engine simulation roared. Now at 160, her eyes fixated on the windy road, her knuckles whitened with her own grip on the faux leather wheel. Her heart raced. Her mouth salivated.
Then she froze. The car was slowing. She pressed the power pedal. Nothing. She was slowing down. The steering wheel began to turn beyond her control. The car was turning into a gravel parking lot.
Her face froze in terror. Her head stopped thinking. Up ahead, there in the parking lot, was it? No!
Her parents.
The GPS.
She was grounded for a month. With no network privileges.
But she would always know now the taste of freedom.
by submission | May 23, 2011 | Story
Author : Colin O’Boyle
Edgar Miller was a convict. Currently, he was an escaped convict, and that was the way he intended to stay. He’d broken out of prison through a series of well-laid plans, noticed opportunities and a bit of luck, not to mention violence.
“I said, ‘Give me the money!’” Edgar waved the gun in the storeowner’s face. The man, a balding African-American gentleman, was quaking in his boots, and from the smell, had peed his pants. That, plus the smell of the sweat on the man’s shiny palate were starting to irritate Edgar, so he decided to give off a warning shot to convince him that he was serious. He did so, the shot thunderously loud in the enclosed space, and the storeowner gave up hope that someone was going to stop this madman.
With pudgy fingers, he emptied the drawer of the cash register into Edgar’s canvas bag. Edgar, not wearing a mask of any sort, considered killing the man, but the lack of security camera gave him pause. As he ran out of the store and took off down the highway, he told himself it was because people in stressful situations don’t make good eye-witnesses.
The actual reason, however, was somewhat different.
“Ladies and gentleman,” said Dr. Johnson from his podium to the roomful of reporters, “I’d like to thank you for coming out to the cave today.” He gestured to what was behind him, a device that could only be called a pod. It was roughly the size of a couch, but was shaped like a transparent egg. Metal arms cradled it, and strands of colored wires emerged from its sides. Resting securely within this metal contraption, on a bed of gel and foam, lay Edgar Miller.
“We call it the cave after a famous thought experiment by the Greek philosopher, Plato. In this thought experiment, people were born and raised in a cave and forced to sit and face a single wall. On the wall, a light would be projected, and the people…essentially the wardens, would make shadows on the wall. Now—” Dr. Johnson pushed his glasses back up his nose, “—the people in this cave, since they had never been anywhere else, would see these shadows and, for them, that would be the world. We here at the Virtual Correctional Institution are a bit more technologically advanced.”
Dr. Johnson gestured toward the pod. “Mr. Miller is aware that he was placed in prison. He remembers everything in his life up until that moment. After that, however, things get a bit tricky. Mr. Miller was selected for our project as he was considered by the psychological staff that evaluated him as an incorrigible criminal, and that the best one could hope for was for him to be contained.” Dr. Johnson smiled. “We thought we could do a little bit better than that. In the cave, we control every aspect of our subject’s lives, far more so than any normal prison. Thus, when a subject makes a good choice, he can be rewarded and, eventually, be introduced back into society a rehabilitated man.” Dr. Johnson paused, allowing this to sink in a little, before saying, “Now we’ll adjourn to the atrium where I’ll take any questions you might have.”
As the room cleared, a journalist happened to look upwards as he walked out of the doors to the atrium. Above the doors to “Plato’s Cave,” was a quote by the Institute’s founder:
“The perfect prison is one in which the prisoner thinks he’s free.”
by submission | May 22, 2011 | Story
Author : Justin Short
The world’s largest man will tell you like he has told half a dozen others: you are not experiencing time travel. Just relax. Of course, he’ll feed his face on a double bucket of chicken as he explains it, but that part isn’t vital to understanding.
“This so-called time travel,” he laughs. “Like, picture the guy here last month. Begged me to let him in on the secret. Man was dying to get back to the 1960s and go to Woodstock. Couldn’t help him.”
Impossible. Just a romantic pipe dream. Traveling this way is as farfetched as world peace, as unlikely as a dog not eating its own puke. So sorry, hippie wannabe. Sorry, world.
The bucket is low. No problem, the man just pulls out a five-gallon water tank filled with twice-baked potatoes. Your feet burn with anxiety; why, after all, are you here? You beg him to get to the point. And with potatoes shooting down his throat like whipped cream, he does so.
“Now, first thing: we’ve never actually met. And this part may surprise you, but this is the first time you’ve ever stepped foot in this room.”
You try to argue. You’ve been here before. Every detail is familiar – that’s a fact. And it’s not some kiddie notion like déjà vu.
“I could use a glass of water,” he croaks, turning red from his tray of biscuits. “But I repeat: this is nothing so juvenile as temporal manipulation. Not even a vivid flashback. Thing is, pal, you can recall the future. Even predict it sometimes. And that feels funny when you try to deny the fact. I know.”
You shrug. Instinctively, you knew that. The way you visualize people a day before you meet them. Those daydreams of conversations that don’t occur for weeks. Even tried to confide in a friend once – embarrassing mistake.
Still, his response doesn’t satisfy. So why am I here?
The blob smiles, one jowl puffing out in a friendly gesture. “You forgot this part, I reckon. Too bad.”
You remember (or remember when you remembered), but not soon enough. The pistol was hidden under the pie pan. It’s leveled at your nose. The fat man gives you an only-doing-my-job shrug. “Of course I’m sorry. Nothing against you, bud. Just…you remember the future like it’s a boring memory, but so do I. And it’s my job to make sure that memory doesn’t happen.”
A flash. Dying stings worse than you recollected.
