by submission | May 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Adam Zabell
It started seven years ago when I was diagnosed with sudden onset electrophoretic meningitis. They had to dope me unconscious, take me off-line, electronically isolate me from the rest of the hospital, force doctors and nurses to use archaic diagnostic monitors from the pre-implant era. The specialists warned my wife how my illness was nearly always fatal, how the recovery was notoriously difficult because I had to remain off-line for at least six months. My optic nerve would atrophy from understimulation and the prognosis was grim. Partial to permanent disability as my reduced reaction time within virtuWorld would translate to a drop in my vIQ of 30 to 125 points.
After the coma, they usually talked about me like I wasn’t in the room. It wasn’t their fault, not really. When everybody was connected, off-line was inconceivable. They gave me one of those terminal-keyboard devices, forced me to learn how to read and type. I went cross-eyed trying to hold any decent conversation. My fingers tied in knots if my mind raced ahead of those infernal buttons. My wife filed for permanent /uninvite and /ignore status. If I wasn’t using that keyboard, I became invisible. I’d gone from being part of the network of humanity to an aphasic imbecile.
During one of my mandatory exercise periods on the ward, I saw a man in plaid pants and an orange shirt holding jovially one-sided conversations with everybody who walked past. He caught my stare, smiled and said “Oh hai! Welcome to the outside. Gotta run.” By the time I got the attention of the duty nurse, he was long gone. She politely reminded me how extended disconnectivity sometimes caused hallucinations. A copy of the security cameras sent to my pathetically flat monitor revealed no jolly man, of course. I couldn’t even see where I was until directed to a green polyhedron. “You’re not online, so we triangulate based on transmission antennae and your laptop. Don’t worry, once your convalescence is complete we’ll have you back in the community.”
Two days later the jolly man walked into my room and stood next to the nurse who recorded my vitals. Talking over her banal patter, he said “You can opt out. Be Ready.” It was surprisingly easy, but probably because I had already learned to live in my own head. Walking through the city today, men and women part like water. They aren’t even conscious of swerving, their glazed eyes in a REM sleep saccade while navigating the parallel universe of vWorld. Children aren’t fully integrated into the siliconized network and occasionally catch sight of me out of the corner of their eyes. But my people are a logical impossibility, so those nascent computers filter me from direct visual experience. Bogey men, specters, dopplegangers. Eventually vWorld has to account for our mark on the world, somehow. They call us ghosts, and maybe we are. But for all that I’ve lost, I’ve never felt more alive.
by submission | May 28, 2009 | Story
Author : K° Pittman
They stopped at Hatch 5. “In and out, ten minutes, tops. No tourism.” Bremmer’s gloved hands fluttered over the fittings and straps of Aplon’s dull grey outdoor suit, readjusting his rebreather mask and visor.
“Righto, pops.” Aplon toungued off the mask’s speaker and bounced to a private channel. “No excursions. Why are we armed, then?”
“We’re armed, because…” Bremmer stood, and Aplon began an identical refitting of his gear.
“The birds.”
“Birds?” Aplon had heard the word, seen the images and holos, had even petted the sim at the small Naturama deep in city’s caverns, its roof open to the electronic sun, and it still took him a moment to remember what ‘birds’ were now. Non-sim. Unreasonably aggressive. “Birds.” He tasted the blade of the word, savoring its new balance. Bremmer turned to the wall locker, extracted two BlackBoxes, two Bee Guns, and two sticky tangles of RazorMesh, handing half to Aplon. They seperately self-attached each item deliberately.
“They’re building things now.” Bremmer said this quietly, as if stll astonished, before affixing a flat, black wafer to a shallow slit in the upper torso of his suit. “Like towns, or cities. Lots of different birds together.”
“Really.” Aplon’s goggles felt unreasonably tight over his eyes for a moment. “Really?”
“Yeah. They’re destroying drones, too, but they’re still afraid of us, mostly, unless something happened between four hours ago and now.”
“Where are we going? Are we, like, bait?” Aplon’s wrists reflex clench-flexed his Bee Guns. His glanced at the drone counter and head-calculated the amount of mass he’d need in a scrape.
“No. Drone got gaffled less than a quarter-klick from here, up in the ruins. We’re gonna run to it and back, tagging anything notable, do a close scan if possible. If the data’s cool, a squad will go retrive it or autopsy it on site.”
“We can’t image it from here?”
“Too much light pollution. But most of the birds can’t hack direct daylight either, so now’s a safer window than most.”
“What’s the autopsy for then?”
“Lab wants to determine if there’s sophistcated tool usage happening. I bet not, but Lab has needs.”
Aplon and Bremmer simultaneously started jogging in place as if signalled; Bremmer waved the ante-chamber open, and they ran in, bobbling in place on the dais as it floated up-from and over the silvery, roiling floor through the hemispherical blister towards the external hatches.
“Bremmer,” Aplon broadcast over the massive grinding, rumbling of the door while waiting for the Hatch to cycle open|shut|open. “Bremmer!”
Bremmer waved and the hatch paused a hair’s breadth open. Outside light poured in like poison through the crack, and iridesecence scaled their visors.
“We’re the clade’s best runners. This is just a run. No loitering, no engagement. Stats gave me ace odds that this is a solid. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“If things get weird, either hit mesh and bug out, or go mesh and Bee the fuckers until we can jettison. Got it?”
“Yeah.” Aplon turned to the door and nodded to Bremmer, who waved |open| to resume. “Did Stats give you odds on who gets there and back first?”
Their visors throttled back the blinding flood of light as they ran forward into the scalding illumination of one million days of constant summer. Aplon heard Bremmer grumble, over bursts of hiss and static, “I gotta a lot of creds riding on this either way.”
by submission | May 27, 2009 | Story
Author : J. M. Perkins
Jenny sat, tapping her fingers to keep from biting her nails. She was having trouble concentrating. She was having trouble being here and now, in this hot vinyl booth in the retro burger joint. The display contacts in Jenny’s eyes flashed red, all manner of cautionary metadata and concerned messages from her always networked friends streamed before her eyes. She could barely see through all the blinking, as the computers in her shoes fed info and communication in real time.
“Shit,” Jenny said, as a haptic tingle informed her that one of her parents had focused on her feed. It took five seconds of stillness before the message came. Like a Cruise ship crashing through sail boats came all caps text from Mom. All the other streams shrunk and minimized before the alpha priority of parental communication.
YOUNG LADY, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING???
Jenny thought about responding, had no idea what she could possibly say.
I WANT YOU TO GET UP AND LEAVE THAT PLACE RIGHT NOW.
Jenny bit her lips together, scared now. Robby lowered his head. He didn’t have to ping for information about her surging heart rate, even without being privy to the conversation he understood.
“Jenny…” he said. She was about to respond before being derailed by.
JENNIFER GENE DELANCY I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING AND YOU WILL COME HOME AT ONCE!
“I should just go.” He said as he gathered up his things and stood.
“No.” Jenny said. Slowly, as slowly as people ever did the inconceivable Jenny reached up and removed the contacts. She didn’t care about the warning tags and negative reviews and marks that floated like shifting currents about Robby when she was wearing the displays. She didn’t care about the admonishing of her friends. Jenny didn’t even care about what would happen when she got home.
Jenny rose and kissed Robby with as much force as she could. Caps and moms be damned.
by submission | May 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Juilan Kehaya
It was bright and he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. William panicked. Every limb tingled like static running through his veins. Something was in his throat. His eyes adjusted, a ceiling, a light. Electric shock forced him to blink. Hadn’t he just been at the beach?
“Hey! You were supposed to be watching him!” A male voice came nearby but dull and muted.
He heard a chair scrape, and two sets of footsteps moved towards him.
“It’s ok Will, relax, you’ll regain mobility soon,” John said standing over him now with Mary.
“I’m sorry Will, I’m sure that gave you a fright,” Mary soothed.
Will tried to relax but adrenaline had his mind racing. Unable to move for what seemed like an eternity, he began to feel his body, smell the sweetness of Mary’s hair, and hear the buzzing of electronics. The whole time she stayed with him looking down into his eyes. Finally, he was able to turn his head to the side; the tube retracted into a hole in the wall gagging him on its way out. Fluid spewed from his throat and he was breathing again.
“There now, it’s almost over.” Mary said, “Let’s get you into a rehab pod”
***
“Be happy you didn’t have to be awake during entry. The automated landing was quite the thrill ride.” Mary said, her voice resonating through the plastic of the rehab pod.
Minutes later the pod hissed open and Will sat up, able to move with ease.
“Everyone looks good captain,” Mary said matter of fact, and tapped her handheld opening the hatch to command access.
“Alright, everyone will see Mary in one hour, no excuses. You all know your post-landing routines,” captain McGovern ordered.
Will moved through the cramped command access and took a seat at his array, powering it up. The graphic display showed all the signals they were receiving and the monitor came to life running diagnostics. He rubbed his hands down his face and inhaled deeply. Diagnostics complete, his own image appeared on the monitor in the corner.
“Comms up and running captain. ”
“ETA?” the captain replied.
“Two minutes. Think they are all toasting with champagne yet?” Will smiled.
The captain rose and approached the monitor. “Probably, Roberson always sneaks some into Control.”
“Here it comes.”
The monitor displayed an icon then automatically opened up a video window. Will immediately saw Roberson in the background, party hat, bottle in hand. He and the captain exchanged wry looks.
Mission commander Bill Severs came on screen, “Congratulations captain McGovern! We received automation that the Red Lander arrived without a hitch. Second shift will be…”
A scream echoed somewhere in the background. Both men watched as Bill turned his head. Light flashed. It looked as though the room went sideways, then the feed went black.
“Will?” The captain said.
“Sir, I’m not receiving their signal.”
All signals started to drop off the graphic display, some in groups; save one.
“What’s that? Tap into it!” the captain ordered. “LBA? Thought that was abandoned.”
Will leaned in, “It is. They left behind a web cam for the school children.”
Video flicked back on. It was night on Earth, a new moon. Both of them stared in silence. The sun haloed the Earth. They could see a few patches of lights. Then large, bright, orange circles appeared and vanished. Two more minutes it lasted, both men silent. The planet was almost invisible now: a black, silent circle between the moon and the sun. The web camera vainly tried to focus on the now black circle, back and forth.
by submission | May 24, 2009 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
“It’s beautiful”
“What is?”
Jake looked over at Sara, sitting on the ledge where the window used to be. She was hugging her knees and staring out at the sunset.
“The sky. It’s pretty tonight, like someone reached out with a paintbrush and dabbed the colour there t’lift our spirits”
Jake leaned over to whisper in her ear;
“What if I was to tell you that, over there, over where the hills are that you can’t see ‘cos the city’s in the way. Over there, where the country starts, that’s where all the people were running too. Runnin’ ‘cos that’s what the broadcasts were tellin’ them to do. Run, and don’t look back. Them ships are coming, with bellies full of weapons. So they ran. And when those ships sailed over and opened up those bellies, they fired just at them peoples. That’s why these building are still sitting here, so the likes of you can sit here and wax lyrical about the pretty colours. They sailed right over the city, but they hit those people dead on. The sky’s red like that ‘cos the firestorm’s still burning. It ain’t no artist that’s makin’ the sky all pretty, its them dead people, all turned to dust when the bombs hit.”
“Why weren’t you with them?”
Jake laughed hoarsely, his throat strangling the sound into ragged coughing.
“I was with ‘em girly. Me and the rest of the boys, herding all them people like so much cattle. Thinking we were helpin’ em when alls we were doing was gathering them up nice and tight for them big guns. Why d’ya think my lungs are cut up so bad. Nothin’ quite so bad to breathe in as dust that was still people only a flash before.”
Sara slowed hard and looked over her shoulder at him. Grimy bandages wrapped his face and hands, in an effort to protect the worst of his scorched skin. His lips were cracked and blackened, and blood spotted his shirt and hand from his last coughing fit.
“You gonna die?”
“Course I’m not gonna die. Promised your Daddy I’d take care of ya, and I can’t be doing that very well if I go and leave ya on your lonesome, can I?”
Jake started coughing again, doubling up as spasms racked his chest.
“And you gonna show me a real sunset?”
Gasping to catch his breath, Jake followed her gaze up to the swirling red clouds of the setting sun.
“There won’t be any real sunset fer some time, not till them people all settle back down to th’earth for their final rest. But if you cin be waiting that long, then yeah darling, I’ll show you the prettiest sunset you’ll ever see”.
