by submission | Feb 28, 2010 | Story
Author : Tony Healey
When my heart decided to start failing on me around my seventy-fifth, the doctors offered me a bio-mechanical one. They called it ‘the ox;’ so called because it apparently never wore out. I remember sitting in the consultants office, surrounded by plastic models of replacement limbs and artificial eyeballs. Dr Fenwick sat at ease in front of me with his hands folded on his desk.
I asked him what the procedure involved. He described the removal of my damaged heart and the attachment of a device to keep the blood circulating in my body in its absence. It was then a simple case of reattaching the old arteries to the new ones in the mecha heart. I had enough of a nest egg put away that I could afford the procedure, so I agreed to it. Dr Fenwick stood and we shook on it. He regarded my prosthetic hand; the result of a traffic accident in my thirties.
“You know, we have replacements for these now,” he said.
“Do you?” I asked.
“Yes. We could replace it with one that looks almost life-like. You’d regain most of the dexterity in your fingers as well,” he said.
“Well I could…” I stammered, my mind reeling. I’d gotten used to not having the use of the fingers on my left hand, and now the thought of having it all back made me nauseous.
“Do you wear those all the time?” he asked, nodding at my glasses.
My head span. Hearts, Hands… Eyes… What else could they replace? I asked him.
He simply shrugged. “Everything,” Dr Fenwick said. “And we do insurance…”
I was still in that office hours later, booking up more enhancements. I allowed Dr Fenwick to convince me into putting the last of my money toward an extensive insurance policy. It wasn’t until later that I realized they would just keep on replacing things, even the new parts when they wore out or malfunctioned. I should have felt full of energy, knowing that I’d significantly extended my life span beyond what it was meant to be, but I didn’t. I felt tired.
I wondered how tired I would become…
by submission | Feb 26, 2010 | Story
Author : KJ Hannah Greenberg
Snazzle considered, as she queued up, among the morning roses and goldenrod, that members of the machinists’ men didn’t take warmly to her puttering about their racks and chargers. Despite the technicians’ protest to the contrary, whenever she brought Little Guy to honk among the geese and ducks, those mechanics shuddered and pushed him and Snazzle away.
It was not so much that Little Guy emptied enough corn onto the ground for all of the barnyard’s critters, let alone the fowl, as it was that Little Guy picked up the heifers in the same way that more typical offshoots might lift a puppy. While they labored on their harrows and on their seeders, those lab guys slit their eyes at Snazzle and her kin.
Those thinker-tinkers especially got antsy when Little Guy wandered over to their self-propelled sprayer; they blamed that unit for her tot’s physical prowesses. They hadn’t known that Snazzle’s baby had snacked on foxes and on wolverines long before he tottled.
Rather, those applied science guys figured that a strong dose of nitrogen had altered Little Guy’s chemistry such that his xylem, which flowed among the cells of his mental engine, leaked out in almost organic guttation. The agricultural artisans reasoned that Little Guy performed feats during the day because at night his stomata remained closed. They hadn’t counted on his need to cuddle with his mama.
Snazzle shook her filaments in answer to that imagined discourse. Little Guy no more possessed hydathodes, through which he could express excess water, than he did any other means of transpirational pull. His mutant state meant that he would be, forever, forced to evaporate fluids through his tongue. To wit, he left his main orifice open. That he swallowed whole sheep or goats during his ambulations was accidental.
Consequently, Little Guy considered their jaunts to the ranch occasions for seeing and tasting animals. Snazzle, however, saw those journeys as opportunities for borrowing utensils she needed to create a system of secondary growth, of activated vascular cambium for her child.
To Snazzle, circumstances are caused by vicissitudes, not karma. Solutions derive from effort, not from self pity or blame. Ennui means lack of faith. Feelings of victimization mean not trying hard enough.
The thought of having to rupture Little Guy’s epidermis in order to accommodate his growth left her discolored and dried, but Snazzle was resolute about helping him. In the end, she would help him form cambia on the outside of his phloem.
Such direction would necessitate Little Guy ingesting a few horses and a couple of the farmer’s sons, but it would solve his metabolic quandary. Thereafter, Little Guy could cross pollinate with any woody vine of similar genetic material. The couple could produced mobile, flowering grandchildren for Snazzle and could rid the farm of its rat problem, its cats, its donkeys, its llamas and its prize elephant.
by submission | Feb 24, 2010 | Story
Author : Lisa Marie Andrews
“What’ll you choose?” She stood behind the boy and looked into the mirror. His cheeks were dusted with freckles; eyes darkened with indecision.
“I don’t know.” He said. He’d always thought it odd that the skinless wore no clothing. They walked exposed in bright coppers, burnished golds, and tarnished silvers.
“Once we weren’t given a choice.” Her fingers were polished from use. They through the windows refracted light from fingers to mirror to the boys pale skin. “Once it wasn’t voluntarily and the process would have lasted years, now you can choose, Jacob. How long do you want it to last?”
Jacob inhaled slowly. The soft scent of ozone crept into his lungs and he wondered if he could stand to never taste the air again. The glass misted over as he exhaled.
“Why’d you pick to be the way that you are?” He asked.
“The way that I am?” Her laughter rippled in waves and bounced off of the walls. “You’re of the fourth generation, Jacob. You should be used to this by now. Natural growth is a slow process and I’d been flesh for long enough.”
“But, mother, is it really enough? You lost things when you chose to Transition. You could have stayed flesh, you wouldn’t have lost anything.” The metamaterial that was his mother’s face grimaced, but the emotion didn’t, couldn’t, touch her eyes.
“Look outside, Jacob.” The room shifted and the walls became windows. “How many adults do you see wearing original skin?” The figures that lined the streets below were varied in shapes, sizes, and colors, and most of them reflected the suns light. They rippled and flowed across aged pathways.
“You don’t miss anything? Any of it?” His hands pressed against the windows, the oil of his skin marred the pristine glass. “You didn’t love any of it enough to stay. To just wait through it. Grandpa waited through it. He said it could be, that it might be, better…to just wait.”
“What do you love the most?” She said.
“The tastes, the smells, the -feel- of the air on my skin, the way it brings warmth and coolness to me. I’ll miss that. I love that.” His voice cracked, just a bit, and his eyes widened in surprise.
“But for years you’d be uncomfortable. Your voice will crack and yes, the cracking will fade, but you’ll age, like your grandfather. It’s your final day to choose, Jacob. Your voice just proved that to you, even if nothing else has.”
Jacob pushed open a window and let the currents of air dance across his skin, let the warmth of the sun kiss his freckled cheeks. He watched a woman with sunken skin wrapped around hollowed eyes, with arms that hung in gentle folds of flesh, set a slow pace down the pathway. Would she live for another 10 years? His mother would live much longer. Much longer then everything that wasn’t, or hadn’t been, rebuilt. She wouldn’t ever be like that. His arms looked small, bony, and he wondered what it would be like to wake in the morning tall and strong. What would it feel like to move with the fluid motion of the skinless? What would it be like to never feel his bones grow frail and worn by time and to never again feel the sun.
“Make me like you.” He tasted the air again. His mother pulled him into an embrace before she opened the door and they turned to leave.
by submission | Feb 23, 2010 | Story
Author : Phill English
Special Agent Jessy McCormick knocked gently on the door of the Director’s office. He looked up from his desk, where a large holographic display was swarming with reports that he was busy gesturing into folders, signing quickly, or dumping into a bottomless recycling bin. He didn’t pause as he addressed her.
“Yes, Special Agent?”
“Sir, we’ve just received a call from the Deterministic Energy Department.”
The Director grunted. “And? What do they want?”
“They want you to take a look at something. They say it’s important.”
The Director barked a laugh, “I’ve got an outbreak of Chaotics in the main district, over one thousand energy directives to implement, and a list of official emails that I might finish reading when I’m asleep in the grave. What could be so important?”
“They say they’ve found a cache. They said they believe it to be the biggest they’ve seen for decades. Centuries, perhaps. Sir, they said they’ve found the ‘motherload’.”
The Director’s hands finally stopped sweeping the console’s face. “‘Motherload’? That’s the exact term they used?”
“Yes sir.”
The Director was already out the door before Special Agent McCormick had a chance to ask what it meant. By the time she caught up, he was already stepping into one of the department’s cuboid transports. “Did they say where they were?”
“Yes sir. Third District, Thirteenth Iteration.”
“Thank you Special Agent, dismissed.”
* * *
The maniacal sobbing was audible as soon as the Director stepped from the transport. DED troops surrounded the entrance to the Iteration. The Chief of the DED was standing at the entrance. He greeted the Director as he arrived. “Thought you might like to see this before we set the boys loose. Not every day you get a cache like this.”
“Who’s the owner?”
The Chief consulted his display. “One Mrs. Narelle Williams. She’s the noise you can hear. Totally deranged. Keeps screaming that her boy will be coming home any minute now. The room is his apparently, perfectly preserved.”
“Is he here?”
“Records show he died in the riots three years ago. Hardcore Chaotic.”
“Good. Less ownership issues. May I?”
“Go ahead.”
The Director ducked down into a room hidden by a false bookcase. This was old tech, probably put in place in the final days before Order was imposed. As he descended the final steps and turned to inspect the space, he was dumbstruck. It was quite a small room, perhaps five square metres, but what it lacked in size it made up for in clutter. Mangled sheets cascaded from a bed that was half buried in an assortment of sex mags and political books. Any of the stained carpet that may have once showed through was covered by food wrappers, clothes, and moldy tissues. The shelves were lined with action figures and the walls practically hidden by a layering of posters. The finishing touch was provided by a pair of filthy underpants hung from a ceiling fan.
The Director whistled. The DED had their work cut out for them. Restoring Order to this mess would yield enough energy to power the District for years.
by submission | Feb 21, 2010 | Story
Author : Jeff Kirchoff
A few short keystrokes and the room sprung to life, bare, the walls black yet glowing with the subtle aura of electrical potential. Rico strolled to the center of the small space and looked at the crumpled paper clutched in his left hand with a sigh.
He spoke aloud to the empty room, “Cara, is everything ready?”
“Yes, loading is currently in progress.” The mechanical sound of the ship’s AI buzzed from the walls in response, mechanical and staccato in a vaguely feminine way, “Welcome back Chief. Should I run the program now?”
“Light it up.”
“Roger.”
The walls of the room flickered with static then snapped into focus, like an ancient television adjusting itself after a sharp thump. Where moments ago there was only blackness now contained an impressive springtime reproduction of a tall, shady tree surrounded by a secluded meadow. Wispy white clouds materialized in the sky, floating lazily overhead as wildflowers sprung up around Rico’s feet, growing a month’s time in an instant and spreading the pleasant smell of nature, subtle and earthy. He took in a deep breath and sighed.
Beneath the tree’s canopy a small ironwork table flickered into existence, followed quickly by two complementary chairs. Knowing what came next, Rico began to walk toward the tree and took a seat. Elbows on the table, he gazed at the empty chair opposite him, trying not to close his eyes.
He blinked. In the span of an instant a pale, dainty woman appeared before his eyes. Her long chestnut hair wafted in the gentle breeze, her blue jumpsuit ruffled almost imperceptibly.
“Kenna.”
She stifled a giggle, “I wish you would stop having a staring contest with the computer every time we do this, you know it waits to make huge changes until your eyes are closed.”
Rico cracked a grin, “Right. So how have you been?”
“Great! I got hired into Mars, just like you suggested.”
“Well, I put a word in.”
Kenna twirled a finger through her hair, “I appreciate it. Everyone is so nice here, all the red is kind of hard to get used to though. How’s your run going?”
“Same as always.” He frowned, “You know how hauling cargo can get.”
Her face turned serious and her voice badly mimicked his, “It’s a lonely job but someone has to do it!”
Rico gave her a playful shove, “Cut it out.”
“I wonder how you put up with it.”
“Well, this room certainly helps, how realistic it is.”
“Oh, of course.” A smile spread across her face, “So, what did you want to do today Ricky?”
“Nothing…” He abruptly grabbed Kenna’s hand,” I just wanted to sit here with you for a while.”
She smiled, “Whatever you want, love.”
The allotted time for the meeting passed and Rico sadly said his goodbyes, promising to meet again soon. As the room blackened and he stepped through the door into the cockpit of his hauler he looked again at the crumpled paper in his hand that he had been clutching the entire visit. He smoothed it out and stared at it while he sat back down at the helm, picturing himself receiving the printed letter from the post at his last stop, months ago.
Dear Rico,
I’m sorry that you had to find out this way but
we’ve been growing apart for so long and
I had to move on with my life, I hope that
you-–
He couldn’t bear to read any further.
“Cara.”
The ship droned, “Yes Chief?”
“I can’t do this anymore, delete the VR program I’ve been running.”
