by submission | Feb 9, 2010 | Story
Author : Eric Kimball
It starts as the faintest quiver of sound, a slight singsong beat carried by the wind. The few stray notes that reach my ears instantly spring to the forefront of my consciousness.
“Mother, he’s here!”
“Hmm?” Mother replies flatly.
The mechanical calliope is louder now, adding to the urgency in my voice. “The Good Humor man is here!”
“Oh, and you want to get something?”
This strikes me as a very dumb question, but I simply reply, “Yes, please, may I go?” Now is not the time to anger Mother.
“Very well, but don’t take long.”
“I won’t,” I say in mid-stride. I emerge in time to see a battered white truck with a yellow emblem crawling down the road. Other people are here and we all cluster about the truck in a teeming, churning mass. After jostling in a crowd that resembles a tiny war more then a queue, I reach the front.
Sam, the Good Humor man, looks over at me with his big plastic grin. “Hey there buddy, what’ch get’en today?”
I pause for a moment, looking at the brightly colored board. Behind me, the crowd shifts angrily, but I ignore the collective impatience.
“I’d just like a Neapolitan, I think,” I say after considering all the options.
“Gotta love the classics, buddy,” Sam says, extending a plastic packet with his piston-driven arm. The packet drops into my hand as Sam turns his cold glass optical ports and poorly painted head to the next customer.
I tear open the wrap with a single pull and then guide my trembling hand to the cybernetic socket at the back of my skull. There is a quick jolt of pain as the chip comes to rest in its socket, sending short circuits through my body and brain. Then the experience fills me.
First kiss, first date, first time someone says “I love you,” the sweet bubbling strawberry of love in blossom. I savor the sensation, feeling the excited butterflies in my stomach, drinking in every moment of it. Then the next emotion overtakes me, the cool, smooth, creamy sensation of a love in full bloom. A walk hand in hand with a loved one, a soak together in the hot tub, the simple pleasure of waking next to them, I float through oceans of vanilla bliss. Last, I descend into the dark, decadent chocolate sensation of love-making: not sex, but the velvety sinful sensations around the borders of intercourse, a nibble of an ear, a gentle caress, the contentment of post-coitus. These feelings coat my body in thick, warm syrupy streams.
Eventually the sensations fade, receding with each beat of my heart like an ocean tide. I remove the expended Emotional Emulator from the back of my skull, a thin trail of smoke wafting from the charred circuit.
Before returning to my work station, I take a moment to watch the others. Some dance to invisible music, others laugh at an unspoken joke, and others quiver in sexual ecstasy. The “real thing,” as the outsiders like to call it in their ridiculous flyers, is a shallow imitation of the Good Humor chips.
Besides, who has time for the “real thing”? From morning alarm until the beginning of another sleep cycle, we’re occupied with debugging code, swapping circuits, and defending the perimeter. But it’s worth it. Only an AI like Mother can create the Emotional Emulator chips. If we keep her happy and functional, then trucks will be sent, loaded with their simple electronic pleasures. After all, it’s the simple pleasures that make life worth living, is it not?
by submission | Feb 8, 2010 | Story
Author : Bill Lombardi
Troy sat by his bedside. Watching.
Hours past and then Jon’s eyes slowly opened. “I’m thirsty.” His voice wavered, his strength beginning to ebb.
Troy poured him a glass of water and stood by him holding the straw. He took several sips. Coughed. Troy wiped his chin. Soon he was asleep again. Troy sat and waited.
When he awoke next he asked, “Is it day”?
“No. It is night.”
“Can you see the stars?”
Troy went to the balcony doors, drew the curtain and opened them. He looked up at the moonless sky. “There are many stars.”
“Can you see the Big Bear?”
“You mean the Great Bear. Yes.”
“I remember lying in the field out back at night naming as many constellations as we could.”
“And you were always incorrect.”
Jon laughed weakly which led to another bout of coughing. Troy moved to his side and helped him sit up until it passed and then he gently laid him back down.
“You’ll stay with me?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t know why I ask. We’ve been together for as long as I can remember.”
He placed a cool hand across Jon’s forehead and soon he was asleep again – and the ever present Troy sat and waited.
Several days passed and he never woke again.
They came and took him and Troy watched from the window as the vehicle pulled away. All of Jon’s things had been packed and removed. Only Troy was left. He looked around at the empty rooms and on the floor in a corner was an image. He picked it up. It was of the two of them when they had visited China. On the Great Wall. They both stood backs against a turret, blue sky above. Troy remembered that day. They had walked and seen as much as they could while the sun still shone. Taking images. Troy folded it and placed it in the pocket of his pants and then went to stand by the door. The service would be by soon to wipe his memory and shut him down. He looked around at the empty rooms again. And waited.
by submission | Feb 7, 2010 | Story
Author : Matthew Banks
“It thinks,” said the emaciated man, blinking up at the doctor with red-rimmed eyes. The doctor looked down at him for a moment, then turned to the display mounted on the wall. The multiscan of the man’s brain was mostly normal, except for the bright blob sprouting from the left hemisphere. The doctor turned to the man. He was mostly normal, too, except for the weeping ulcer on his chest. But as with all his other symptoms, the ulcer was abnormal, as demonstrated by the glossy white molars sprouting in a clump from its center. The doctor suppressed a disgusted sneer and turned back to the display.
“It probably does think,” she said, stroking her chin, “I don’t know what Dr. Glasseter told you, but it’s no brain tumor. It’s a pleurineoplasm.”
“A what?”
The doctor rolled her eyes. That was the problem with these longevity treatments: people got them without having any idea how they worked or what side-effects there might be. She frowned at the patient. “I think your brain is trying to grow an extra lobe.”
The man blinked. “Why?”
The doctor scowled, and the man recoiled. “Why? What do you think? It’s the Novos. How long have you been taking it?”
“A few years.”
The doctor shrugged. “Well, there you go, then. Your body is throwing off stem cells like crazy, and without any real regulation, sometimes they get confused. Didn’t they explain all of this to you after the surgery?”
The man self-consciously touched the scar beneath his armpit where a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic had pulled a fully-formed kidney out of the patient’s lung. The doctor wanted badly to shake her head at the man and laugh.
“Well…he said, looking down at the floor and swallowing loudly. He looked up with renewed confidence. “Just the price of immortality, I guess.”
This time, the doctor couldn’t help but laugh. The man squinted at her. When she regained her composure, she walked up to him and pointed at the toothy lesion on his chest.
“Immortality? You’re going to keep getting those. Dentate teratomas are the most common side-effect of Novos. How long do you think it’ll be before you get one in your brain? Or you get one in your heart that gets gingivitis and gives you a fatal blood infection? Mr. Greene, you’ve been suckered.”
He scratched at the lesion and picked aimlessly at its teeth. “I was running laps a week after the lung surgery. Whatever accidentally grows on or in me, I can have it removed and recover just fine.”
“No you can’t,” the doctor said. Her voice had grown solemn, and the patient stared at her, startled.
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t have the brain growth removed. Thanks to the Novos, it’s already forged connections with pretty much every anatomical structure. That’s why you’re hearing the voices, that’s how you can tell it thinks: you’re hearing the neoplasm’s thoughts. If we tried to remove it, we’d probably take most of your brain with it. I project you’ve got about two months before you’ve got too much brain to fit in your skull and you slip into a coma and die.”
The patient looked up at her. He scratched his toothy lesion and blinked wetly.
by submission | Feb 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski
Amanda awoke from a deep slumber and saw that her alarm clock would be going off in ten minutes. Not pressing enough to climb out of bed to turn it off just yet, but unfortunately also too little time left to fall back asleep.
However it only took a moment or so for her to realize that today was the day. The day she’d be finally free of her mood ring. Suddenly the morning seemed full of promises she had rarely dared to dream of for fear her ring would betray her. Shout out that she was not on an even keel. Medications to bring her back into ordained normality would follow if the ring reported such emotions becoming commonplace.
She had already been using unlawful ware the past few months to occasionally fudge the logs her ring kept. Logs which would be dutifully uploaded by her ring for expert systems and her parents to review each time she entered the warm embrace of the home network. Uploaded each time she passed a contraband detector at PS 34 for analysis by the school’s psychological systems and even a therapist to review if the records justified flagging by the so-called expert systems.
Altering the logs was a crime warranting a grounding at home and one leading to detention and mandatory group therapy at school. It was worth it though. To hide the “dangerous” pulses of wonder, anger, lust and angst that not even a generation ago would have been considered normal for a girl her age and, more importantly, be something she’d be able to keep to herself and maybe a well hid journal. Finally she’d be secure in her own mind and emotions.
Those occasioned bouts of rebelliousness and the feelings they engendered would soon be more easily had. Watching illicit films like “The Breakfast Club”, reading passed around beat up copies of novels considered too stimulating for kids and teens or listening to the ancient (21 or older only, please!) crooning of Jim Morrison – “Oh tell me where your freedom lies…”
After third period Chemistry hers would lie in a new mood ring. One with altered circuitry and hacked software.
A week ago she had let Harold run a scanner over her ring. He said piece of cake and he’d have her new ring ready in seven days.
If it was so simple she wondered why it should cost her $400 in horded allowance and baby sitting money…but can one put a price on her own freedom?
The few people she dared to raise the subject with all said Harold had the know-how and, more importantly, the connections to get an illicit replacement for her. One encoded to give off the same secret handshakes as her real one and to camouflage all extremes of emotion with bland ordinariness.
Today her ring, which would scream out in vivid red, yellow and violet if she dared be herself and which dutifully tattled on her with seemingly greater enthusiasm than her little sister, would be replaced. The new ring would glow gentle hues, but stay mainly dead, dull, safe, complacent grey. The log files would show brief, low spikes of emotions. A nice, safe, boring, well adjusted teenage girl. Just what every parent wanted and every expert said was the standard to be strived for. Square pegs must be made round!
Today freedom of thought and freedom of experience would be hers. All wrapped up in illusionary grey.
by submission | Feb 4, 2010 | Story
Author : Cesium
Each clutching the other’s hand, they waited atop the Green Building.
They weren’t supposed to be here. No one was. But the tallest building in Cambridge, Massachusetts would soon depart the soil on which it had stood for so long, and they couldn’t have missed the chance to be here. To watch the final stage of Daedalus, from the inside.
Some enterprising soul had planted a replica of an Apollo Lunar Module on the roof behind them, likening to the old Saturn Vs the twenty-one-story concrete box on which it perched. A flag hung above it, unmoving in the still air. The motionless silence unnerved her. There should be wind. There should be people walking far below, talking of subjects she would never understand. Yet there was nothing. Beyond the sheath that now enclosed the building, she could see the labyrinthine tracery of streets that filled Cambridge to the north, the cars in their orderly caravans sliding efficiently from place to place, while the sun crept down to the horizon and the fiery clouds above glowed orange and violet.
But within, the Green Building, neatly packaged for transport, rested in preparation for its own journey.
Around them, a huge tract of land adjacent to the Charles lay vacant, fallow dirt under long shadows. It had of course long since gone to the highest bidder, a Dubai company planning to raise an arcology on the site. But that had to wait until Daedalus finished. Until it cleared away this, the last remnant of old MIT.
It was just MIT now, as it had been for decades, since its focus had shifted offworld and “Massachusetts” had become inaccurate (and also, if the rumor was to be believed, so it could sue the pants off MarsTech). For almost as long the original campus, here in Cambridge, had been suffering from declining admissions and increasing irrelevance. Yet its reputation remained untarnished, and history still lived in its bones. So now, as the wealth of the outer system was starting to pour back to the mother planet, the children of MIT, the architects and the chemists and the astroengineers, had returned to lift these old halls into the future. Just because they could.
And that was Daedalus.
Giant engines above had raised the buildings of MIT one by one out of Earth’s gravity well. An unprecedented feat, it had taken years and drawn the awe and fascination of the world. Enclosed in protective organic sheaths, miracles of bioengineering, the buildings floating like soap bubbles among the stars had joined the construction of New Boston, a gigantic space station with artificial gravity. Not all had emerged unscathed, of course, but that most survived had given them courage enough to stand here on this night, looking out over the city spread below them.
There was a slight tremor beneath their feet; the near-transparent sheath rippled noticeably. Cables, pillars and struts holding the building in place adjusted automatically. Her hand tightened its grip on his. It was time.
“Boston is lovely at night,” he said, slowly. “But you have to see it from above–”
They leapt toward the sky.
