by submission | Aug 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
Isaac blinks and tries it again. There is an apple on the table in front of him, and another on the shelf to his left. He reaches out with his left hand and picks the fruit up. It has the texture and heft of an ordinary green apple. Isaac lays it down beside the red one in front of him. He hesitates as he does so, although he knows, has deduced by empirical observation – which he is rather good at – what will happen.
It happens again. He blinks once more, then takes the green apple away. There is one red apple in front of him. He wonders what will happen if the green apple is cut in half, but he has had no access to any implements since he arrived, by means which he does not yet fully comprehend, in this place.
There is a stranger seated across from him, but Isaac does not meet his gaze. He has devoted his life to observing and deducing, but he is genuinely disturbed by what he has seen here. The fact that his companion appears to find it mildly amusing has put Isaac in a foul mood, and he can no longer contain himself.
“This is impossible! Sir, I demand to know by what trickery you make these abominations appear!”
The other man, who has not even so much as introduced himself, smiles at Isaac, which causes the old man to sigh intemperately.
“There is no trickery, Isaac. This is the natural order of things. Simple mathematics. You have one object, and you add another to it, then there are five objects. Take one away, and there will be one left. How it is, and how it must be.”
Isaac is irritated enough not to notice that he has, once again, been addressed inappropriately. His mind is on another path now.
“Is this Hell, sir? Is this my punishment for whatever transgressions I am deemed to have committed? If so, I demand my judgement! I demand to be heard, and to face the wrath of my creator in person. Not to be trifled with by some insipid underling. Sir, you mock me, and I will not tolerate it!”
“It amuses me, Isaac, that so many of the ones we retrieve from your dimension talk in these terms – although not, if I may say so, always in such eloquent language. If it pleases you to consider this some kind of judgement upon your character, then we will accommodate that. In truth, it is your mind, rather than your character which has alerted us to you. We feel certain that your thorough understanding of the mathematical principles of your limited subset of the – ah, I must apologise; as far as we can discern, your language has no word for it; let us call it the universe – will help us in our studies. Given time, we feel sure you will come to relish the challenge.”
Isaac does what he often does when he feels discomfited; he harrumphs loudly, which seems only to provoke more amusement. The other man stands and leaves the room. Isaac glares after him.
Outside, in a space which Isaac might have recognised as some kind of corridor, the other man passes his case notes over to his supervisor.
“I think he will come round; he’s certainly the most promising one we’ve had yet. No sign of mental instability at all. In fact, he’s mostly just irritable.”
The supervisor smiles thinly. “You did remember to tell him not to eat the apple, didn’t you?”
by submission | Aug 7, 2009 | Story
Author : Garrick Sherman
Sarah settled back into her seat on the time skipper. She picked up a magazine and tried to read, but found she couldn’t focus.
“Are you alright, dear?” the old woman in the next seat asked her. Sarah realized that she was bouncing her leg energetically.
“Yes, sorry, I’m fine. I’m very excited,” she replied.
“It is exhilarating, isn’t it?” the old woman remarked enthusiastically. “Oh, I remember when they first told us about time skipping. The notion of dipping into a black hole’s gravity, then pulling yourself out with another black hole, and if anything goes wrong in that nanosecond—“ she clapped her hands together like smashing a bug, “—pow! You’re done for!” she shook her head. “It sounds crazy, but it’s really amazing, don’t you think?”
Sarah nodded weakly. She didn’t like to think about the crushing gravity that would be pulling her into the distant future, but gravity-travel turned out to be simpler than flying at relativistic speeds, so she had no other option. Sarah found relief in her version of the trip: she pictured herself as a caterpillar being wrapped in a black hole cocoon and then bursting forth in the future as a beautiful butterfly.
The intercom buzzed. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. At this time all final preparations have been completed, and we are ready to depart. According to regulations we are required to provide a five-minute last call to withdraw yourself from this craft. Remember, there are no means to travel back in time: once you have committed, you will be unable to return to the present. If you are having second thoughts, please contact one of the attendants in the front or rear of the skipper. Thank you, and we will be departing shortly.”
When the COM had clicked off, the old woman turned back to Sarah. “What makes you want to take this leap, sweetheart?” she asked.
The question flooded Sarah with anguish. She thought of her loss and her pain, and her need to escape such a pitiless world. For her, the answer was to skip ahead. She didn’t care what the future held, just so long as it was something—anything—else.
She tried her best to fake a smile. “Just the excitement of something new,” she lied.
“Oh, yes, same for me,” gushed the woman. “Who knows what we’ll find? Unbelievable technology, aliens, a deserted planet—anything at all would be magnificent!”
The speakers hummed. “Ladies and gentleman, please take your seats as we begin our jog to the black hole.”
Sarah gazed out her window at the glowing globe below. From above it seemed beautiful and serene, and for a moment she almost regretted leaving. Then the engines roared to life, and she watched the planet shrink into the past.
by submission | Aug 6, 2009 | Story
Author : H. Chaskin
Above the clouds, it still rains. No pitter-patter. More like split-pea mist.
Floating highway roars outside. Looks like Jetsons. Smells like Jersey.
Naked Lady Calendar: July. Never used to rain in July.
Electric eye jingles an 8-bit interlude above the door. Octo-Gen with no teeth dodders in. Orders a hockey puck, so I burn one.
Behind the counter, flipping the burger. Synth-beef smells like octane. Octo-gen eyes an antique on the shelf. Faded decal on the side. “Historic Route 66”. Been there since I started here. Décor, I guess.
Octo-Gen: That takes me back. Nice machine. Pre-paperless.
Octo-gens talk too much.
Clock: 22:47. All night job. Kid in college.
My son: Georgetown: What’s left of it. Studying law. Rebuild, maybe.
8-bit interlude: Second customer. Fat Officer Flatfoot. Works the Ottawa shift. Tired, like I’m tired.
Officer: Don Martin Special. American Charlie in Red Pants. Dust the Roof, Hold the Pom-Pom.
Drawer 42. Unwrap green cube. Nuke It: 30 seconds. Enjoy your meal.
Downs it like a duck. Barely chews. Siren: Blip.
Officer: And a java for the road. CHNO-plus, no Sucra.
Bitter bean pills liquify in the styro-can. Flatfoot scans his token, and the black-and-white hovers. Disappears into the soup.
8-bit interlude: Dried-up floozy with blurry lipstick. Little boy with her. Running, maybe.
Floozy: Radio sandwich, mystery in the alley. And Balloon Juice for the kid.
Me: Radio’s fritzed. Mercury recall, you see.
Floozy: Just the mystery, then. And Balloon Juice for the kid.
Me: New special tonight. Graveyard stew. For the kid, I mean.
Floozy: Just the mystery.
Token scan. She puts fifty on one, thirty on another, and the rest on a temp-card. I don’t ask questions.
Drawer 22. Unwrap gray cube. Nuke It: 35 seconds. Enjoy your meal.
8-bit interlude: Man in pilot jacket. Scraggly beard. Looks like mariner.
Floozy pokes at the hash with her chopsticks. Kid won’t drink. Busy night.
Mariner: Jumbled-cluck. Green-o. No synth-prots.
Doesn’t look like a high roller. I remind him.
Me: Greeno’s top dollar.
Mariner: No object.
We keep the real stuff in the back.
Freezer door hisses shut and I come back with egg. God help me, real egg. White and round. Cold.
Tell him to swipe his token before I crack it. Instead, he asks for the register. Tall order. Short gun. Snub nose. In his jacket pocket. Old gun. Wonder if it works.
Me: What’s a register?
He points to the antique on the shelf and it hits me. He’s a past-master. Nostalgia bandits. Luddite Bakunins who order green-o and steal antiques.
Floozy is crying. Kid spilled his balloon juice. I hand past-master the relic. He cradles it like it’s worth something. Backs out of the place, gun pointed my way all the time.
“Down with the automats!” he yells from the door. And gone into the soup.
by submission | Aug 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Joseph Patrick Pascale
An imposing man with the makings of a beard splotched across his face, Garrard skulked down the grimy Philadelphia streets slouched forward as if his muscles were barely contained within his hoodie. He crunched the plastic coffee cups that littered the sidewalk – no newspaper tumbleweed to be found here since paper production had been outlawed. Apparently increased production of plastic was better.
Grunting as he pushed past a throng of pedestrians, Garrard glanced up at the dusky sky with no fear of hiding his face, since most people wore a cybtact in one eye and a speakermic inside an ear to surf the internet. The mind’s autopilot moved them, but they weren’t paying attention to their surroundings. They were probably out for dinner since telecommuting and online shopping removed most of the middle class’s reasons to leave home. Even physical jobs were increasingly replaced by human-controlled robots. Not Garrard’s job though. He had no cybtact, he planned on working with his hands.
He located the manhole with the familiar CTV&T logo on it and once the street was desolate, Garrard easily dislodged it. Climbing down the ladder, he made his way until he located the encasement for the mess of fiber-optic cables that ran underground. He unzipped his sweatshirt and removed a hacksaw, which made quick work of the wires. Reaching into a back pocket, he revealed an archaic rectangular device that filled the underground labyrinth with a white noise echo when he pushed a button.
“SP’s going dark.”
For two days the internet was out. No one knew how widespread it was because there were no streams of communication. Cops were in the streets trying to spread news by word of mouth. “Terrorists,” they’d say. Things were chaotic when people realized that they couldn’t buy anything to eat because their bank accounts were linked to the internet, but the cops got restaurateurs rationing out food with the promise that an emergency tax that would go into effect to repay them.
It was 3:06 AM when people realized that they could connect online. Press conferences were up of the president and other world leaders blaming the outage on widespread and well orchestrated terrorist saboteurs. The leaders assured that the best minds had worked to ensure this would not happen again, and that the new internet they’d rebuilt would be safer and more secure.
As usual, people were posting comments on the websites providing this information. However, users dissenting the official story, questioning the likelihood of such a well organized terrorist group, found their comments could not be posted no matter what they tried. Others who attempted to do their normal share of downloading free copyrighted content on pirate websites found error messages that booted them offline all together. Hackers attempting their traditional routes of hiding their identities and peeking into information that wasn’t theirs were similarly kicked offline.
Over the next few months, these people would be receiving visits from government officials who would ask them about these illegal actives and determine if they were enough of a threat to be imprisoned.
A clean-shaven man dressed in a suit was making his way up a wide stone staircase in Washington, D.C. He pushed his way through the door and past a metal detector that started buzzing.
“Go right through, Agent Garrard,” the security guard said. Garrard continued down the large, marble room toward the elevator. He reported to work in person, the old fashioned way, because when you dealt with secrets, it was best not to leave a trail of text or recordings behind you.
by submission | Aug 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Saus
She is within two hexes before my character notices her perfume. She is approaching from behind. I left-toggle the camera angle back to third person, floating above his head. Minicams hover and spin, filling in the the peripheral things a 120 degree first person field of view misses. She has surprised me, and the transition is faster than I like. A brief wave of nausea flows through my stomach. My character puts a hand on his stomach as well.
Her business suit, usually stiffened into two dimensional polygons of fabric, is wrinkled from her day at work. It is still stiff enough to offer a pleasing contrast to the soft inverted arches of her hair. Click left, right, mouse gesture, and my character moves smoothly towards her. She kisses my character’s cheek all moist warm lips until she notices the eyes.
“Chaz, damn it!” She shoves, and the perspective wobbles. It makes it hard to read the word balloon over her head, but my text-to-speech rig is good enough that I still understand her.
She glares up and back, towards the print of the Warhol Campbell Soup cans behind my character. She draws an imaginary line between its head and the technicolor cans.
“Get back in there, Chaz.”
My fingers fly, and I hear my character’s voice: “Wrong side.” A quick gesture, and he smirks, too.
She slaps my character – bioforce feedback loops simulate it well – then looks dead-on at my viewpoint. Her wedding ring slips easily off her finger, smooth and elegant as a practiced rocketjump. I up the resolution and see her eyes are misted over.
“Remember this, Chaz? Remember the promises we made? I made them to you, not… not this shell.”
Clickety-clack. Enter. “This is me. This is my character.”
Her ring hits my… the character’s chest.
“I wish you had never gotten that damn implant, Chaz.”
She stalks out of the room. She does not need to pack – the bag is waiting – and she leaves our …the… apartment. Several option icons flash softly at me. Follow. Stay. Sleep. Watch TV.
I do not select them. My face is still warm from the force of her hand slapping my character.
I want to restart. I want to start the level over, to try again.
That icon never appears.
