by submission | Feb 15, 2010 | Story
Author : K. Pittman
Sometime before midday’s full blaze, Susan threw down her skein and stopped walking. Georgia broke pace steps later and trod back, face flattened, hat shadowing her glare.
“What.”
“I want milk. I’m tired of water.” Susan half-turned and looked from whence they’d walked.
“There’s no more milk. Those jackasses pinched our stashed powders before trying to rape and/or rob us, remember? It got ruined in the fight.”
Susan’s hands moved towards where pockets would have been, finding: many canvas belt pouches, some part full, all cinched tight: a sun-warm firearm, holstered, secured: pack ladders and buckles, floating taut on taut webbing – she folded her arms underneath her breasts, drew a deep breath, exhaled deliberately. Dropped her arms and swiveled towards Georgia-
Whose weapon was in her hand, its burnished muzzle trained on her. “Do you want to die?” Georgia’s look was unwavering, and exhausted.
“I…I don’t understand.”
“Exactly.” Georgia took a few steps forward, wrist steady. “Pick up the water.”
“What are you doing?”
“This,” said Georgia, wrapping her free hand onto the gun and centering it onto Susan’s head, “is an object lesson. Your first and your last.”
Susan stepped back into a defensive stance, staring past the gun, into hat’s cast umbra, locking eyes with Georgia. “Stop pointing that gun at me.”
Georgia’s eyes locked back. “Pick up the damned water.” The gun never drooped.
Minutes passed.
Finally, Susan knelt, costive, to the scrub, arms bent out and away, and picked up her skein, gradually attaching it to her belt. She looked down, to secure it fast, and heard Georgia’s heels turning in the sand, her steps away regular and fast. Susan scrambled to catch up, and wordlessly fell into formation two steps behind, two steps to the left, her footfalls in a ragged echo of Georgia’s rhythm.
Georgia spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Next cache is in 12 klicks, near water, and Ray’s old trading outpost. A bullet or two’ll get us new powders. Maybe a short stay. Might be some sort of small civ near, within a days travel maybe. Maybe. You can opt out there if you like.” Susan’s abstruse stare looked past her shoulder. “Fine. When we get there, we’ll hit the flask, and you can bitch me out, but I don’t wanna hear anything until then. I just saved your fucking life.”
“But-”
“You’re my only…my last fucking friend, Susan. I’m not letting you chump out of this one. There’s no fucking safety net. There’s no exit,” and silence and steps and silence and the sun across the sky on a long hot afternoon.
by submission | Feb 14, 2010 | Story
Author : Nick Gonzales
“You heard they finally nailed teleportation?”
“No.”
“Yeah, just yesterday.”
“For real?”
“Fo rizzle.”
I turn to look at Billiam, his eyes lit up expectantly as he leans towards me across the table. His face is twisted into his characteristic grin of childlike excitement. An off-putting grin, but not without some charm. You’d think he had just told me we had finally put another man on the moon.
Today, Billiam’s hair is fluorescent green, with streaks of pink, symmetrically arranged into eight spikes. Mine is the same color, but I did mine in the sink.
“No, I mean, like, for _real_?”
“Of course for real. Teleported a small little mouse all the way from New York to Atlantis,” he beams.
I can actually feel my hopes fall.
“What do you mean ‘of course’?” I sigh. “Atlantis?”
“What? What’s wrong with Atlantis?”
A female white Bengal tiger slowly trots by the table, followed by a small pack of screaming children. The smallest, a girl of probably about four years, dives forward and grabs the rare cat by its tail until it pauses, allowing her to jump astride it in a practiced motion. Kicking her heels into its side wildly, the girl hoots as the cat resumes its walk. A quick check of Wikipedia informs me that the Panthera tigris is an apex predator and obligate carnivore, native to East and South Asia. I don’t believe San Diego is located within either region… but it gets hard to tell sometimes.
The sky darkens momentarily as a dragon flies overhead. Or maybe it was a plane.
“Hey, Robin.” Billiam calls me back to the conversation.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said what’s wrong with Atlantis?”
“Um, Atlantis isn’t a real place…”
I’m 65% sure that Billiam is a hologram.
Officially, there are no sentient holographic images yet. Officially. But the problem with an obligatory collective conscious web is the lack of filterization. The Resonance is beyond this sort of control. The holos were introduced at least a year ago.
Billiam scoffs and falls back into his grin. “What do you mean not a real place? Didn’t we go there last year for Spring Break?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Come on, man. We all know Atlantis is no more real than that tiger. The island nation belonging to Poseidon that sunk into the ocean eleven thousand years ago. The Atlantic Ocean, I might add.”
“Quoting Wikipedia again?”
“Paraphrasing. Please.”
“You know, I don’t get you sometimes. So much reliance on the Resonance, and yet you doubt it so.”
My problem is not with the holos. I’ve been to Atlantis, that digital paradise twelve miles off the coast of California, with its attractive native population, perfect weather, and exotic architecture.
But is anyone building anything real anymore? What is the benefit in building something when it can all be programmed into the collective consciousness? Are there any real hairstylists anymore? Actual pet shops?
It is easy to become paranoid, growing up in a society raised on science fiction. But this isn’t the Matrix. The world is still real so far, I was alive before the Resonance was activated.
But I wonder what all of the physical scientists are doing now that computer science has taken over the world? What does it even mean when you teleport a living creature to a place that doesn’t exist?
I have been to Atlantis, I realize with a start. What does that mean?
“You there, Robin?”
I’m 65% sure that Billiam is a hologram.
And what is the benefit in being human in this digital age?
by submission | Feb 13, 2010 | Story
Author : Michael Merriam
“We never had much,” she said. “The freighter was our life. Now it’s all lost, ripped apart by a neutron star.”
I sat next to her. I couldn’t answer. My mind was dazzled, my eyes locked on her naked body stretched out on the bed we shared. She reached out her arms, and I fell into her embrace.
My lips on her neck, I stroked the flat of her stomach, reached beyond with one hand until she pulled me onto and into her body.
I was a silly child. She had over two decades on me, my lovely, melancholy lover.
Later — days or weeks later — we sat on the rocks overlooking the dead lighthouse, long abandoned, nature carving it up.
“Do you think the stars will give back what they have taken, at the end?”
“I don’t know.”
And I didn’t. I still don’t.
She was a beautiful burning demon, all alabaster skin and black hair. She seemed an artist’s creation, unreal, ethereal. In that moment she frightened me.
“I think they will.” She turned, leaned on me. I place an arm around her, held her tightly.
Soft sobs and crashing surf were all.
#
Autumn.
A cool breeze blew off the sea as I watched the crowd gather like ghouls and vultures. The white and red van, its ugly blinking eye atop, sat parked with doors open wide. I didn’t need to go down. I knew.
I didn’t travel to Mars Station to see her casket fired into the sun, as was her right as a navigator. I didn’t want to watch it blaze in the an instant before evaporating or deal with dour strangers and weeping women, black shrouded, staring, whispering, asking questions I wouldn’t answer.
I would remember my lover for her laughter, her sweat-covered skin after sex, her gentleness in all things.
“Do you think the stars will give back what they have taken, at the end?”
“I don’t know.”
I still don’t.
by submission | Feb 10, 2010 | Story
Author : Sean Wallace
“Now, we all look forward to entering the Archangel when we retire, but what about those people who go there before then? Constance Vyke reports on the people who keep Archangel running…”
Constance, pretty in a thin, blonde sort of way, starts her report through a practiced smile. “Thank you Milo. The Archangel Station, owned and run by the UN, has been running for almost thirty years; taking us in when we become elderly and giving us a life of pleasure and joy in our most fragile years. Not everyone who comes here does so for the Grace Chambers though. I’m here with Nigel Howard, Chief Engineer for the Archangel and he is, as you can see, a great deal younger than 65.”
Nigel offers a small smile, slightly confused. “Hello there Constance.”
“First of all, I’m certain our viewers would like to know how you can cope with being so close to the Grace Chambers?”
“Well, I’d be lying if I said it isn’t tempting, but thankfully you need specific implants to be able to join the residents; implants stored and inserted planetside. So there’s no way for me, or anyone else here, to ‘dip in’.”
“But how can you cope with it? Bliss and joy happening so close to you and you cannot take part in it… even I’m feeling the pull, and I’ve only been here a few days.”
“Firstly, if you work on the Archangel you get to retire five years early. Plus, without people like us, no-one would be able to enter Gracie…”
“Gracie? Is that what you call them?”
“Oops, sorry.” Nigel wipes his hand down his eyes and coughs. “Yeah, it’s the nickname we gave the Intethlon Quantum Core GC20. It’s a lot less of a mouthful. But yeah, we do an important job, maybe the most important job there is, so you get a lot of satisfaction out of it.” The increased numbers of suicides and high level of substance abuse went unmentioned, especially after Head Office had some serious words with him about ‘appropriate responses’.
“Anyway,” Constance says, slight annoyance peeking through her media-friendly tones, “what’s a typical day like up here? What do you do every day?”
“Well, we don’t work every day Constance. But for me, a typical day involves nothing more than your usual space station Chief Engineer; I read reports, ensure the tech is all in working order, manage the new arrivals and deliveries…”
“And it’s really not difficult to see hundreds of people enter the Grace Chambers, Gracie?”
“Really, it’s not a problem.” Nigel coughs and balls his fists. “… but anyway, we get everyone in, give them the introduction and then fit them into the chambers for their new life. Then we send back any deceased for planetside burial and ensure that the next day’s work is prepared. That’s about it; as I said, nothing more than the typical station.”
“Alright then, Nigel, just before I go I’d like to ask what the first thing you’re going to do after you retire is?”
Having thought long and hard about this over the decades he’d worked on the Archangel, the truth sprang to answer the question itself; “I’m going to Solar-sail to Mars.”
“Thank you very much for your time Nigel.” Constance turns back to the camera. “There you are viewers, normal people doing amazing work up here in the Heavens. For MSN-BBC, I’m Constance Vyke.”
“Constance Vyke there. We’ll see you after these messages…”
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?
