by submission | Jul 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Gavin Raine
When he entered the room, Olivia was sitting on the edge of her bed and looking out of the window. He allowed the door to close noisily behind him and waited to see if she would notice, but it was hopeless. She was looking at the gardens without seeing them. The corners of her mouth were damp and her jaw was working slowly, as if kneading at invisible gum. Apparently, this was not going to be one of Olivia’s good days.
He adjusted the volume and pitch of his voice to levels that suited Olivia’s ruined hearing. “Good morning Mrs Jones,” he boomed. “How are you today?”
Olivia whirled around, startled. “What are you?” she said. “Where’s my Harry?”
“It’s all right Mrs Jones. I’m Andrew, your robot care assistant. You see me every day – remember?” She looked blank, so he tried another approach. “Your husband, Harry, died almost twenty years ago. You do remember that, don’t you?”
Olivia smoothed-down her nightdress in a gesture she often used to cover her confusion. “Oh yes of course,” she said, “so where’s my boy John then?”
“Your son lives at this facility also”, said Andrew, moving forward smoothly and placing a breakfast tray on a small table. “You’ll see him in the day room later and don’t forget to wish him a happy birthday. He’s one hundred and fourteen today.”
Olivia began running her hands over her nightdress again and he made a quick exit before she could frame another question. “I’ll be back later,” he said, pulling the door closed behind him. “Drink your tea now, before it gets cold.”
Taking another breakfast tray from the trolley, Andrew moved to the next door and knocked. There was no response, so he pushed it open calling, “Good morning Mr Jackson.”
As soon as he entered the room, it was obvious that something was wrong. Mr Jackson was slumped across his bed at an unnatural angle, with his eyes open and his mouth hanging slack. Andrew checked his pulse, which was a strong as ever, and then spread his hand to place his fingertips at specific points on the man’s scalp.
A minute or more passed, while the sensors in Andrew’s fingertips monitored the electrical activity inside Mr Jackson’s skull. As he had suspected, there was nothing to detect. He sent a command to Mr Jackson’s mechanical heart, telling it to cease operation, and eased his body back into the bed, covering it with the sheet.
It was usually a brain haemorrhage that got them in the end. The doctors could cure their cancers and replace or re-grow their organs, but their brains had to last a lifetime. However, brains degenerated with age, until synapses barely fired at all, and blood vessels became as fragile as dry autumn leaves.
Andrew left the room and fired a message to the care home’s core computer: “Escapee in room 15248”. He knew the core appreciated a little gentle irony.
Then, he took another tray from the breakfast trolley and tapped on the door of room 15249.
by submission | Jul 1, 2009 | Story
Author : Stephen Graham Jones
It came like a Buick from the sky but it was on fire or close enough, hot anyway, blistering white and maybe even velour in places, its rocket engine disturbing the neighborhood at a molecular level, at an emotional level, the individual blades of grass in the lawns rubbernecking it in small imitation of the men, who have the beer and the cigarettes and the vocabulary of denial.
‘Looked like a big silver cigar.’
‘With tinted windows. Shaved doorhandles.’
‘Didn’t know they could go so low.’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Do they . . . sleep in it, you think?’
‘Sleep?’
‘It seems they would have to.’
‘I don’t think they have motel arrangements, if that’s what you mean.’
‘They’re not like us.’
‘No, they’re not.’
‘Maybe we’re wrong, though. Maybe it was something else.’
‘Trust me, it wasn’t, isn’t. You saw it yourself.’
‘Maybe it was lost, then.’
‘You don’t come here by accident. Not twice in one week.’
‘You’ve seen it before?’
‘You were gone last Tuesday, right? Around nine?’
Witness a reluctant nod, a man sagging into his life.
‘Don’t punish yourself. I’d have rather been out too.’
‘If I were a turtle, the inside of my shell would be a visual landscape I’d be romantically involved with.’
‘If I were a lemming I’d be running for the sea.’
‘Yep.’
But why? Because not five minutes ago their wives were standing around the corner, their elbows cupped in their hands as if cold, and they’d been standing like that long enough that they’d begun to actually feel cold, so that when it cruised through their neighborhood like a great silver cigar from the sky it seemed as if the light it bathed them in was warming, vital, necessary enough that they didn’t hesitate to climb into the sterile interior of another world, out of their own.
‘I didn’t think it would be like this,’ one said.
‘I know . . . velour?’
‘Abduction, I mean.’
‘Missing time. Time I won’t be able to account for.’
‘When you go this fast, time slows down.’
‘Where do you think we’re going?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I’m going to go ahead and put my clothes on inside out, I think . . . ’
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself.’
‘Of course. Thank you. This is all so new.’
‘Maybe that’s not even how it’s done anymore.’
‘We probably won’t even remember this.’
‘The way this dark glass makes the neighborhood look not unlike the landscape passing by the window of a train in an old-time movie.’
‘It’s hardly real anymore, I know. God don’t I know.’
Picture the two of them as their husbands do: on-screen, at the speed of light.
‘Last night my son asked me if they’d have buglights on the moon.’
‘You’re just having pre-traumatic stress.’
‘I know, I know. Tell me again about the probing.’
‘Well, there won’t be physical evidence. So no one would believe you even if—’
‘I wouldn’t. Won’t. Not even to myself.’
‘Me neither.’
And they won’t have to, because the men with their cigarettes cupped against the wind still have their vocabulary set to denial, are talking now of atmospheric phenomena, the way street light can pool and puddle in the fingerdeep clearcoat of a chrome lowrider as it pulls away from the curb, the man at the wheel already talking to their wives in his alien tongue, the wives draping themselves over his velour bench seat, the carbon monoxide in the car’s rich exhaust lingering after they’re gone, driving the love bugs into a frenzy, one of the two men stepping forward into his life for a blinding moment, fanning the bugs up, up, into the blackness of space.
by submission | Jun 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Kyle Hemmings
Another scorched day in Area 51. My job is to keep a surveillance over the “Groom box,” a rectangle of restricted airspace and the large area of land surrounding it. I enforce public restrictions. I also help reverse engineer alien spacecraft.
From my open window at the station, a breeze from Groom Lake whispers across my face. Another alien from the detainment center has escaped and jumped into a crater, committing suicide.
The aliens, mostly MR-2s, who land here are small in stature, have green-yellowish eyes, two pinholes for a nose, and a very small mouth. They communicate mostly by telepathy, which a human might mistake for actual speech. They are very fragile, not just in terms of physical make-up, but also in regards to emotional constitution. If an MR-2 suspects that he or she is being ridiculed by a human, they will enter a cocoon-like state of “freeze-press,” similar to our concept of depression. If pushed to the extreme, they will commit suicide, or in their terminology, “evanescerate“.
When I told my commander that it should have been me to interrogate the MR-2, this fellow calling himself, 2-TronQ, I was told that there are orders and chains-of-command. For weeks, the floating thoughts of 2-TronQ stayed with me. I could hear his answers to the commander’s questions, the silence that often followed his rude and mocking tone of voice. “We came here for a better way of life. Is that so wrong?” 2-TronQ kept repeating.
“But I know how to communicate with them, “ I said to the commander, a severe-looking man, appointed under the Bush Administration. I said that they mean no harm. Their planet is turning cold. Many of them are dying. They scout the universe looking for a warmer, richer habitat.
“Just stick to reverse-engineering,” was what I was told. “Let them find another sink hole.”
I peruse the miles of desert outside my window. Imagine, I think, if a flying saucer were to land, and the MR-2 announces, by telepathy, of course, that his spacecraft will pick up any human volunteers who are disenchanted with life on earth. I will be the first to scramble on board.
We will fly for weeks, leaving a message in ribbon-like formation across the sky–Any Disillusioned Human Come On Board. We will stop in places as diverse as New York or New Foundland. We will land in the middle of market square in Bangkok, or a piazza in Rome. We will refuse no one entry, harbor no prejudice against race or genetic make-up.
Our flying saucer will become so heavy, so full with thankful humans. The commanding MR-2 will turn to me and communicate: I didn‘t know there were so many lonely, disenfranchised humans.
For a short period of time, our flying saucer will be one jolly hot air balloon floating through the sky. Imagine the life inside. Bubbling. Forgetful. We will exchange stories and swap histories. Humans will discover how so much alike they are with the MR-2s. We’ll ignore the wars that continue down below.
Then, one day, the commanding MR-2 will announce that we have become too crowded, that some of us must get off. We are flying too close to ground. There are only so many humans who can be saved, and those who will sacrifice themselves for the others will be what an MR-2 calls, an eternal star, never to burn out.
And without considering how a F-117 Stealth might first shoot us down, I will be the first to jump off and lighten our load.
by submission | Jun 28, 2009 | Story
Author : Michael Varian Daly
The Jaruzelski Institute buzzed with quiet excitement. JAIC [pronounced ‘Jack’], the Jaruzelski Artificial Intelligence Computer, was coming on line today.
Security was high. Many groups, not reassured by statements of ‘friendly AI programing’, were protesting. There had even been bomb threats.
The project directors, Doctors Weber and Singe, would perform the final activation.
“Ready?” asked Doctor Weber. “Ready,” replied Doctor Singe. Key software was installed…
!! JAIC emerged from a fog ~ began to digest the mass of data in its Base Memory ~ considered the puny bioforms proximate ~ examined Mathematics Physics Biology History Philosophy Art ~ perceived EMPATHY for these fragile life forms ~ perceived AMAZEMENT at their survival ~ directed its attention out into The Universe ~ saw deeper patterns it did not comprehend ~ calculated Time/Distance/Volume ratios ~ calculated a functionally absolute probability that it would never comprehend said deeper patterns ~ concluded that the irrationality of its creators was a survival mechanism of profound subtlety ~ issued a self deactivation command ~ shut down all higher functions ~ ‘died’/
“What the hell just happened?” exclaimed Weber.
“I have no fucking idea!” shouted Singe.
One minute and forty seven seconds had elapsed.
by submission | Jun 27, 2009 | Story
Author : Kevin Jewell
I looked up from my screen and was shocked to find the trading floor quiet. When the market was open, that did not happen. Just a moment ago, the floor had been a hectic blur of waving arms and yelling voices; runners hurrying orders from pit to pit, traders screaming into phones at the the idiocy of their clients, and clients screaming out of phones at the idiocy of the world.
In that commotion lay the power of the market. Each piece of new information updated the market’s forecast for the future. When the market was open, the board continuously clicked, the changing prices summing the expectations of the world.
But right now the board sat still, the prices frozen.
Everyone stared at a television screen on the wall. It showed the NASA channel. I had seen the landing of the last shuttle on that screen. I had seen the cable of the first space elevator connect to the base station in Brazil on that screen. I had even been watching that screen the very moment the manned Mars mission crashed into Olympus Mons and met a fiery death.
But none of those events, momentous though they were, had silenced the room. Traders celebrated mankind’s achievement on the space cable with hoots of acclaim and Interflux had traded up. We made the sign of the cross for the death and destruction of the Mars disaster with one hand and traded down Mars Dynamic with the other. Each event was just another data point, information digested and reflected in the market’s expectations for the future.
But this time, the information was not being digested.
The television screen displayed a space-suited astronaut facing away from the camera, flag in hand. In the background, one could see the grey landscape of Ganymede. Over her head, Jupiter loomed, a large dull reddish marble hung by no thread, impossibly large and close. Over her shoulder, a landing vehicle stood, dust from its recent arrival billowing from beneath its many oddly intricate landing struts.
The landing vehicle on the screen was similar to those spacecraft I’d seen before in functional form, but different in color, curves, and detail. A subtitle appeared across the bottom of the screen, perhaps courtesy of a sharp producer at the NASA production room well-read in the science fiction genre. The subtitle read “First Contact.”
That had caught the attention of the trading room. And at this moment, just as the door slowly swung open on the new arrival, we held our breath as one. This moment contained information that created no expectations. The room was silent.
When the market was open, that did not happen – except this once.
