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
by submission | Sep 14, 2009 | Story
Author : Nitz
She woke up from her nap damp all over. The sky was grey with clouds and the air stayed still, heating up the city. After she felt a sweat drop rolling from her chin to her breastbone she decided to take a cold shower. Refreshed by the water she dressed with white knee-length pants and a matching tank top. She wired up the probes on her shoulders and arms to the brain connectors high on her nape, whispered a prayer for the little gods of luck lying in Planck’s spaces and set off, ready for her late afternoon hunt.
She let the little tunes-humming music spirits catching to the children. Most of them were full of off-beats and half-dreamt melodies. They sold for almost nothing but you could sometimes buy some sweets with the cash prizes. Catching good ones was a bit too much of a gamble to her liking. Her targets required a lot better equipment, access to pricey AIs for analysis and a sensible mind. The bigger game dwelled in the largest cities more often than not and she had to spend three fourth of her first significant reward to buy fully equipped flats in these.
She didn’t know this particular metropolis in her totality and found herself in one of the main roads with people bleeding from buildings and gods and spirits and ghosts begging for attention and prayers. They almost overwhelmed the sensors. She put up her filters and saw – now clear without the interferences – the first track of the abstract god hinted by her intimidated informants in the city’s dream plane. It was a thin changing mathematical form spread on the walls and beyond. The uneasy feeling it gave her meant it spread not only in her translated vision of the swarm of nanoservers but in more than the three usual dimensions. Full of hope she started to run, the aspects of the god more clear now that she had glimpsed it. She followed the scent, her probes and sensors and AIs processing the godplane’s sightings in understandable human inputs.
When she hit the coolest streets and back alleys she knew it was one big gig. The most powerful gods always preferred well cooled nanoservers because of their better perfs. Amazed that nobody but her was on this cornucopia she found its nexus in a wasteland choked with nanos and away from streetlamps, abstract gods’ very definition of heaven. And yet it was alone in it, terrifying other spirits with its size. It gently swirled around her metallic skinned fingers when she overrode its firewalls, quickly filling her drives and forcing her to lend a part of her brain.
She felt it squirming and probing, curious and childlike but weighing dangerously against her barriers. She retaliated sharply, frying some of her neurons in the process but obtained the desired sedating effect.
Back at home she let it occupy the vast mathematical spaces of her single room and read the first AIs’ reports. One big gig indeed. If its more basic equations described some kind of faster-than-light stellar engine, who knew what could lie deep within ? Provided it could be dissected, studied and understood, she would have more than enough money to live dozens of wealthy lives.
The god, unaware, was spreading its wings of evermoving tesseracts on the blank walls.
by submission | Sep 13, 2009 | Story
Author : Iva K.
When you start your career in time traveling they tell you it’s safe. They tell you there’s only a one in thirteen billion chance of getting into “The Accident” and that fixing such a problem is usually easy.
You can call it simply a collision of time fibers – the fabric of space and time is woven very precisely but when you put a human being on one of the threads and let them slide… Well, the human factor always provides for the chance of getting a knob.
My crew had this routine slide – we were supposed to show some VIP guy around the Renaissance so he could decide what part of the nobility personnel needed replacement. It’s how we operate on the past – we don’t change a thing but we have what they call “representatives” of the nobility who are supposed to watch over history and civilization and show tourists around.
Our VIP, my VIP was an era manager as I have been told and I was to be his escort for the trip. “Break the ice,” that’s what my boss had told me and I was doing my best. Jokes and laughter all around, encouraging his ego by asking him about himself. I was fascinated with his experience – he’d been working for “Time Affairs Inc.” for ten years and he had been flying all through the ages, seeing all the faces of civilization. Hypnotized by his stories I couldn’t help but tell him every piece of truth he asked of me. Until the great big bang crashed us into one another.
The impact left me breathles, dizzy and on my knees. His subtle “Are you OK?” got me together as my fingers lay on the palm of his hand. Perfectly shaped, long fingered, and holding me tight – I couldn’t do much but murmur “Don’t worry about me, these things happen. Are YOU OK?” His smile, I suddenly realized, fitted his sparkling cosmic eyes of dark ink. He was fine, he told me, no complaints, only stress. With my heartbeat echoing all around my body I felt euphoria rush through me.
We stood there for two hours. His unbearable charms and me in a knob on the surface of time and space. He and I stuck in a collision where his discreet touch like the fluttering of a butterfly sent Goosebumps all over my very being.
The Accident proved to be the result of some time traveling coordinator’s mistake. He let two slides intersect at very high speed and the blow being very near to our fiber of travel sucked us in. When the mechanics fixed the cosmic issue and the time traffic police came we had to take the VIP to the hospital. “For insurance purposes,” he told me. As I went through the examination he was holding my hand. Except for the sparks of mutual attraction lighting up the space between us the trip continued according to plan.
The ice was broken. His marriage chip was blinking on the nail of his finger.
My one in thirteen billion chance took place. When you start your career in time traveling there’s something they don’t tell you. It’s that your own one in thirteen billion might get messy. And as personal as it can ever be.
