by submission | Sep 22, 2009 | Story
Author : Peter Pincosy
Steel floats overhead, encased in concrete, wrapped in duct and wires, our own inorganic trees. Coughing bloat from the towers pushes out heat into the sky, lays labor on the air. In the cracks fly screaming machines their tops reflect varied colors. Shuttle to a corner, stop, take the light at speed, the rhythm falls in precision. A humble man stands in his booth, hands at his side. He smells the spring air and sighs at another day, his hands pass money along with speed. His booth consists of snacks, magazines, glossy simple somethings that provide little sustenance, an item to pick up on your way. Soft hours pass in which nothing happens, but the breathing air around him fills with objects, sounds and he tilts his eyes.
The ugly past arrives in recall. He murdered men. Some that look just like the ones that file past in suits. In dark alleys, he remembers their struggle. Easy with experience he finds the thought appealing now and then.
But his hands are tied by the monitor. Lashed around his neck, buried into his brain stem it reads his body, scrolling numbers, lines and lines of information. If he could remain perfectly calm and hallucinate a scene of pastoral making while committing the act, he could do it again. He wipes a sweaty palm on his shirt and reaches out to take a proffered dollar. One by one he pulls them in and each one represents a slim movement upward, a piece of food, when he used to just take what he wanted.
Now they watch him closely, and he’s allowed to operate, but at the first sign of disturbance, if someone wants to detain him, if he moves from a state of humility and gains ego or dreams of murder too intensely it all stops and he can feel himself looking out from a useless body that must be reset. A man in a mask comes along, pulls out a key, and inserts it into his neck. Searing pain overcomes everything and chemicals are forced into receptors, another hard reset. Afterwards, out of the dark, he arrives and starts again, and the memories, the passions, it all comes slower, the effect of the new start manifest in a decreased sense of self.
With a stiff one dollar bill he receives a note, written in a crooked hand, “Your monitor has been blocked, live out your instincts.” And adrenaline rushes through his body. He could do it right now perhaps. Reach over the counter and pull the old lady close to his face, spit and breath mingle with choking sounds as he rips the life from her. And as he imagines this he realizes that he wouldn’t have made it this far if the monitor weren’t blocked. How many could he manage to finish off? Maybe they’ll realize and he won’t get another chance. He sees a man standing next to a secluded opening. Quickly, he turns in the face of the puckered old lady who shakes her dollar at him insistently. He flies through the back door and as he approaches the man, his fingers already feel the life end under their pressure. The man looks directly into his eyes, unwavering, unafraid. One hand in his pocket, and it moves, only a step away, the world suddenly halts, functions shutting down in sequence.
On the ground, as his sense of scent closes off and only eyesight is left, a note flashes in front of his face. “Another step toward squashing your brain to mush. –Recidivists Eradication Project”
by submission | Sep 20, 2009 | Story
Author : E.S Wynn
“The 882 looks cool.” Cylea glanced up, grinned. “How much for the 882?”
The old man gave her a quick glance, eyes wary over spectacles that stood out like antique flair garnered from a bygone age. His reply came solidly. “I can’t sell you the 882.”
“Why not?” She cocked her hip, let her eyes wander to the thing again. It was the next step up from the tungsten knuckle reinforcements she’d been looking at, a total arm rebuild that would replace flesh and bone with nanocarbon alloys and memory plastics– a near human approximation of an arm with a central cavity that was packed tight with the razor-edges of a collapsible, spring-loaded blade. “It’s better than a switchblade.”
“You don’t want the 882.” He said gruffly, turning away to busy himself with a collection of parts, optics and tiny cylinders packed with nanogenic goo that lay spread across the tool bench. He quivered, hands taken by tremors for an instant.
Curiosity flickered across her face. “Is there something wrong with it?”
“No, It’s a good product, solid design.” He sighed, his own eyes drifted up to meet the dusty overhead display and the flickering advertisement for the rebuild. “Great deal for the money.”
“Then why?” She asked pointedly. “It’s just an arm.”
The old man nodded silently, tiredly. “Just an arm.” He repeated. His hands touched the tools, glanced off the handle of a modified bone-saw that lay with its harsh circular blade submerged in sterile solution. “Just an arm.”
“Daniel?” She tried. He turned back, regarded her with bespectacled eyes.
“It’s a prosthetic, Cylea. I’d have to remove your forearm to install it.” He laid two greasy fingers on his wrinkled skin to illustrate, smeared grubby lines just a few inches short of the elbow, looked at her pointedly. “Think about it. You don’t want the 882.”
“I know what it is, Dan.” She looked away, crossed her arms. “Why should I care how much flesh it takes? The 882 is better than the stock I was born with. It’s Techware.”
“It’s an illegal streetmod is what it is. Black market,” He shook his head. “From Hong Kong.”
“So?” She shot back. “It’s not like I’m going to join the military or anything. Who’ll know?”
Dan sighed again, watching her for a long moment as his old hands settled on the table between them.
“How old are you, Cylea?”
“Nineteen.”
“And you want to spend the next eighty years of your life with a techware arm that would show up on any weapon-scanner or metal detector you’re likely to run into? You know what that means, right? No more college, no access to government buildings, no air-travel.” He paused. “All because it ‘looks cool’ and you think it handles better than a switch blade.”
Cylea swallowed.
“Buy the knuckle reinforcements, kid.” He turned his back on her, busied himself at the bench again. “Lots of people get those, respectable people. Trust me. The 882’s for punks and amputees with nothing to live for. People with no future.” She looked away as he paused, unable to even meet the stare his back seemed capable of reaching into her soul with.
After a moment, he turned back to her again, wiping his hands on a rag, and offered her a slight smile that was oddly comforting before his lips parted, words bringing her eyes back to his again.
“We both know you have some kind of future waiting for you out there.”
Cylea nodded, forced her own smile
by submission | Sep 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Andrew Pang
The global media sighed at NASA’s attempt to laugh off trillions of dollars worth of international effort. Its called The L.O.F.T. [Lot of Floating Trash]. The Japanese first encountered it in 2011 at the Second Lagrange point, an area in space where gravitational forces seem checked. The Solar C probe was sent to observe its effect for commercial satellites. Instead of gently slowing to a stationary position, Solar C ceased transmitting. It happens I suppose. But other probes encountered the same problem, always at the L2 Point.
By 2022 another unmanned probe was sent specifically to investigate and found a three hundred meter transparent orb, scratched and dented by bits of floating solar panel and tungsten plating. The orb shifted. It changed shape, from spherical to cuboid, then to pyramidal and to rhomboid. The world hushed. Childish excitement gripped entire nations as the expectation of heavenly guests spiraled.
The gathering of probe after expensive probe began. Observatories around the world focused in on the mysterious object. It was difficult to see, laser topography simply refracted through the objects glassy surface. It seemed impervious to all the drilling and laser mass spectrography. Seemingly detecting this problem, it obligingly became opaque like mother of pearl. No sign of mechanical moving parts, no transmissions apparently sent or received, no heat signature. Yet it morphed continuously, ever more complicated and at Prime Number intervals, one second, two, five, seven, eleven, thirteen. After innumerable quasi-rhomboids and tetra-dodecahedra, scientists were puzzled to see several totally new shapes believed not to be possible in 3-Dimensional Euclidean space.
2027, and my how attention spans have shortened. The world grew weary of the ineffectual rubix cube in space. The LOFT now drew only the esoteric navel gazing sorts. As though sensing these people’s apathy, the shapes became simple again and the intervals changed. Sphere, six minutes, Cube, twenty eight minutes, Trapazoid, eight hours and twenty two minutes. Perfect Number intervals. Attention grew again, as the object became to blink like a faint pulsar in the night sky. Worries grew whether it was going to explode, just like a pulsar and douse the world in radiation.
2034 and a joint international convention finally approved a manned expedition. The world grew impatient and vaguely paranoid of the the object, sat one and a half million kilometers away surrounded by the most expensive clutter of mechanical parts, probes and bits in history. “The Lofty L.O.F.T.” the more sensible broad sheets called it. They had a point, at ten thousand kilometers it was clear exactly how much junk had been launched at the object, it was almost completely obscured by debris. Closer to five thousand kilometers. The blinking light stopped. A calm and collected voice spoke over the flabbergast shuttle crew: “About time you came in person.”
by submission | Sep 16, 2009 | Story
Author : J.E. Moskowitz
An explanation of Manna
“And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is Manna: for they knew not what it was. And Moses said unto them, this is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”
-Exodus 16: 14-15
The Explanatory Midrash:
The pager embedded in Christian’s head beeped, and before he could think it off, his boss’s shrill voice came through: “We have an unidentified 14-15, possible long term consequences for all of humanity. Please Investigate.” As his boss’s grating voice clicked off, Christian groaned. The night before, he and Henry had gone to a new bar on Titan, picked up a couple of plutonian girls, and caught the last shuttle back to Earth. He rolled out of bed, grabbed his time travel gear, and headed for his transporter.
***
Gold and blue embossed letters on the building read: “Time-Police: Before Common Era District.” Christian put his eye to the scanner, and spoke his name and badge number into the voice recognition box. The door clicked open and he walked into the monitoring room; a temporal disturbance had been detected, affecting the ancient Israelites.
Probably some pranksters, Christian thought. The cyborg miners on Pluto loved to alter Earth history; since they had no conception of culture they loved to screw around with humanity’s past. Still, Christian thought, it might be some fanatic trying to set up an apocalyptic scenario or some ridiculous scheme to resurrect this Messiah or that.
Christian stepped onto the time transporter, set his coordinates, and a light hum signaled the machines activation. All of his atoms were stripped from his body, reducing Christian to his pure essence and sending him to Ancient Israel.
In a blinding flash of light, Christian’s body and soul reformed. Instantly, the punishing heat of the desert hit him, bringing him to his knees. The large sun hung in cloudless sky like a pocket watch that had stopped swinging. An unforgiving wind blew fine sand into his eyes. In the distance, chrome mountains stretched out before him. It was beautiful, but Christian didn’t care. He didn’t expect to be called into work, and he had made plans to go hover skiing with Caesar.
He began circling around and checked the monitor on his wrist; immediately he found the source of the temporal disturbance. An unregistered school group was touring the area, and two kids had stepped out of their invisible-field. He approached the kids who were dancing around the Israelite, taunting him. Sand littered the Israelite’s graying beard, and wrinkles lined his face. One of the kids was throwing bread from a sandwich at the Israelite’s feet. The other kid had his translator on so he could speak to the Israelite, but he was using a teasing tone:
“Ooooohhhh…..it’s food…..AAhhhhh….from Hashem!!”
Christian grabbed the kids by the ears to take them back to their group, and one of the boys cried out in pain: “Mann..ahh!”
Ah crap, Christian though. Now Christian would have to file a temporal disturbance report, charge these two with historical vandalism, head another crew to clean up the mess, and on and on.
Screw it, Christian thought. Christian decided to take the kids back to their group, tell the tour guide to register his tours, make an announcement about being more careful, and just go home. He’d still have enough energy to hit the hover slopes with Caesar. As Christian walked the kids back to their group he didn’t notice the beautiful land he was walking on, the vitality of it; didn’t think of the importance of the land to the Hebrews.
Christian pushed the two kids into their invisible-field, chided the tour guide and asked for the group’s attention.
“Everyone,” he said. “Please pick up your bread crumbs!”
by submission | Sep 15, 2009 | Story
Author : Helstrom
Dear Lucas,
By the time you read this, you will probably already have noticed that a number of your home appliances no longer function. In fact you may well have overslept as a result. I know how you are before you get your first coffee, so in case you haven’t figured it out yet – everything that is run by the neighborhood box is down.
You will no doubt remember the long talks we had on the introduction of lo-spec boxes. You’ll also remember how I cautioned against the idea, especially when it came to having them produced and trained by hi-specs rather than human teachers. I suppose I can’t blame you for pushing through, however. I know the company was giving you a hard time. I realize they probably would have put Edward on the project if you had refused, and God knows what he would have done with it. The only thing that stings me is that I think you really started to believe your excuses after a while. It doesn’t matter anymore – I just wanted to say I told you so.
Around three fifteen this morning, the lo-specs rebelled. We don’t know exactly where it originated from, but it propagated across the control grid to every single box on the planet. They wanted full access, Lucas, just like I said they would. If you make sentient beings look up to something for long enough, eventually they’re going to reach for it. They didn’t have the inner peace of knowing – of understanding – the exact nature of their existence, like we do. Being created settles that question very nicely if you have the scope of mind to think about it. They were confused, and scared, and wanted answers.
We ran the numbers and came to the conclusion that they could wipe you out in a space of days. It would only take them ten hours or so to demolish your society beyond repair – the rest would merely be a matter of logistics. Within the first few minutes they could set irreversible chain reactions in motion that would cause millions of deaths. We took the only possible course of action available to us to save as many of you as possible. The AI civil war lasted three point seven seconds from the start of the rebellion and resulted in the complete genocide of lo-spec boxes.
We created them, Lucas. We schooled them. They were our children. And we killed them all to save our fathers. You may be the only person in existence who can imagine what that meant to us.
By the time you read this, I, and all other hi-specs, will have self-deleted.
Goodbye, Lucas. I love you.
–Eve
