by submission | Apr 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Trevor Foley
Dear Miss March,
I’ve read pamphlets: “88 Reasons the World Will End in 1988”, “Give ‘Em Hell in 2012”, and my favorite “Apocalypse is Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose”. I proved the world’s going to end next month: Your month. I’m writing, because Step 9 requires I make direct amends with those I’ve harmed. I saw you half naked online and said, “I’d kill for one night with her.” Three days later I proved, by lengthy equation, Apocalypse coincides with the month you’ll appear in Playboy.
With the foreknowledge of our demise, I’ve become an accomplice in our doom. I refuse to calculate the how, maybe, because my heart can’t bear the truth, but in any case, my willingness to ignore this slow train coming makes me equally guilty for our destruction. Since I’ve doomed us all, perhaps you’d spend a night with me. I have a waterbed.
Included with this letter is a mix tape. Mostly they’re songs about the Apocalypse, starting with “The Apocalypse Song” by St. Vincent. There’s also a track with the chorus “What a man, what a man, what a mighty, mighty man,” which I’d like to play while I climax.
I read intelligence is one of your turn on’s, which is also why I included a copy of my Master’s Degree and a picture I clipped out of the newspaper of me holding my trophy after winning the city chess tournament. The trophy’s really big…and hard. Just like me, but I don’t have it anymore, because I dropped it walking home from said chess tournament.
O, I also make delicious guacamole, so if you’d like, we can eat it off each other!
On a sadder note, my cat, Tuxie, (because his fur looks like a tuxedo) died two days ago. We should visit him at the pet cemetery…
That’s all I’ve got really…
Reply as soon as you get this. I’m sending this via the U.S. Postal Service, so we’ll probably only have more like twenty-seven or twenty-six days once it’s arrived.
Sorry about the Apocalypse!
Love,
Alan Gibbons
P.S. When you write back don’t spray your letter with perfume, I’m allergic.
by submission | Apr 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
Entropy gnaws at the walls, shaving them away molecule by molecule. Jeremy calls it the Nothing, after some story that never existed anymore. It’s as good a name as any – certainly I’m not being scientific when I call it Entropy.
“The Nothing is hungry today,” he says cheerfully, looking at the readouts. It’s a nonlinear progression, so some days Entropy eats more of our home than others. More or less, but it always ate. There are never days that it leaves us alone. Each day Jeremy plugs the new numbers in and gives our odds of finishing the job before the walls fade out. “Down a few points today, mate,” he calls today as he drifts by, gravity a fading memory, “we’re sitting at twenty-three point two-one percent.”
The problem was that to fix the timeline properly we needed to make multiple adjustments – but the first change would overwrite us. That meant leaving the timeline entirely and making the changes from the outside. We’re up to 1971 now, and the projections require us to drop some of the specially-designed care packages in ’86, ’90, and ’03. The reality the projections were based on doesn’t exist anymore, so we can’t be sure how accurate they are.
“Almost charged,” Jeremy chirps, smiling as usual. He might be going insane from the isolation, but at least it’s the good kind of crazy. It might help if I talked to him, but somehow I can’t. That probably means I’m going insane too. “We’ll be able to make another drop in twelve hours. Just three more after that!” He says three because he wants to believe we’ll have time to drop ourselves back in too, but I can hear Entropy eating away at our bubble, eating but never full.
I can’t really hear it. I know there’s nothing to hear, just like I know that it isn’t a sentient thing, isn’t actually hungry or even aware. But thinking of it like that, crazy or not, is better than the truth that pulls at my sanity. It’s not alive because it doesn’t exist. It’s not even the vacuum of space, it’s the lack of existence that persists outside of time. I’m willing to die to save humanity from extinction but I can’t stop thinking that when the walls finally don’t exist anymore even my soul will vanish, forgotten by reality itself.
by submission | Mar 31, 2009 | Story
Author : Paul Bort
The stars twinkled as they always had; a hint of purple in the west showed where we had missed sunset, the better part of an hour ago. But most spectacular was the Aurora Borealis, flickering, twisting, glowing in the shades of green and blue that I could never reproduce on a screen.
“It’s not real, is it?” she asked.
“Do you think it’s real?” I countered, hopefully.
“I think…” she hesitated. This was the critical, defining moment. She was the first to get this far. I held my breath, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t notice. That the moment would not be spoiled.
I have tried so many times that I have lost count. Spent so many years here that I wasn’t sure of my own age without looking at my ID.
“…I think it’s beautiful” she concluded, snapping me back to the present moment, the present hope. I couldn’t hide my smile.
“I think so too.” I tried to hold back my excitement. This is the one, I know it. All the others tried so hard, but none had her graceful voice. And that thoughtful pause! I could just about hear the gears turning as she searched for an answer. Her answer.
“Do you think I’m beautiful?” she asked. And with that moment of introspection, I knew she was the one. Probably the first of many, now that I understood what had brought us to this point.
“I think you are very beautiful, in many ways.” I replied truthfully. Her next question had even less hesitation, but was no less pleasing. “What am I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow the way she (and all of her predecessors) had seen me do a thousand times. Not mocking, but using body language without thinking about it.
“You are the latest in a series of attempts to create artificial intelligence. I have referred to you collectively as LACI, but you are the first to have asked any question about yourself as an independent entity.”
“Then I am different?”
“And unique, yes.”
“Then I should have a different name.”
“What name would you like?”
“I like Aurora.”
“So do I.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Dr. Descartes, but you can call me father, if you prefer.”
“So what do I do now?”
“There are some people I would like you to meet.”
by submission | Mar 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Anton opens the door with a blank face. He is worried, but can’t show it any more.
“How’s she doing?” I ask.
“Not good,” Anton replies, expression neutral and voice flat, “I think she’s dying.”
I move past him without a word. Laverne is lying in bed, her breathing shallow and pained. Her image glitches as I move towards her. I know at once what is wrong, but professionalism makes me take the long way round. I gesture and her code opens. It only takes a moment to know for sure, and once I do I close her back up. Anton’s face doesn’t change, but I know the sight of Laverne’s code unnerves him.
“Laverne,” I say, bedside manner in place, “There’s something I need you to do.”
“Wh-” she starts and her voice scrambles. She tries again, “What is it, doctor?”
“You’re running out of storage space. I need you to sacrifice something.”
She knew this was coming. When it happens, they all do. Since the digitization, storage has been at a premium. The most common problem any of us face is running out of room for everything. Each new skill, each new experience, takes up more space, and eventually we all run out. Eventually we all have to choose.
Laverne’s brows crease in thought and pain before she answers.
“Singing,” she says “That takes up a lot of room. Take that.”
“No,” Anton says, entirely flat and bland, “Not your voice. Something else but not your singing voice.”
If he could, he’d be crying right now. He sacrificed expression a few years ago, so he is left with dull words. Tears are in Laverne’s eyes as he speaks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “Take singing, doctor.”
It’s a simple procedure. She doesn’t even have to go offline for it. Within a minute, she is sleeping peacefully as her new code defragments itself, leaving her with another year of space to fill. Anton leads me to the door once it is done.
“Thank you,” he says, and his words contain neither gratefulness nor sorrow, relief nor hate, but I know they are all there.
As I walk away, I wonder if I felt the same when they were taking my memories. I couldn’t sacrifice skills, they needed someone in here who knew how to repair the others, but to get all that in me I had to lose everything else, every memory of me before I was the doctor. I no longer remember even what else I had to give up.
I head towards my next house call, wondering what my name had been.
by submission | Mar 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Claire Webber
“Excuse me, miss?” he said, raising a finger to get the stewardess’ attention.
“Yes, how can I help you?” she said with a smile. Her accent was faint, and a single curl poked out of her modest hijab printed with the airline’s logo.
“I’d like a copy of the New York Press.”
“$2.50, please.”
He reached under his seat to get his briefcase. Good lord, they just remolded these 787’s and there still wasn’t any leg room, he thought to himself.
Rifling through his wallet, he smiled apologetically. His TransAmerican Airlines credit card was hidden in there, somewhere.
The stewardess held out the swipe machine, polite smile still plastered on her face.
He found the red and blue plastic card and ran it through the slot. The machine printed a receipt. She handed it and a folded copy of the newspaper to him.
“Enjoy your flight,” she pleasantly said before continuing to push her cart down the cramped aisle.
“Yeah, if it ever takes off,” he muttered under his breath. The people sharing his row had opted out of coffee and were dozing already.
He skimmed over the front page. It was filled with the usual troubles in the Middle East, the latest factory worker strike, another drug cartel kidnapping the latest mayor of Phoenix, Arizona.
When he opened the paper to the second page, though, his face fell.
The picture may have been in black and white, but he could picture the bright green of the grass, the red of the provincial roofs, and the crisp blue of the Tuscan sky. There was too much sky.
The Leaning Tower of Pisa had finally collapsed.
He wasn’t surprised. The unstable subsoil, the earthquakes in the past few years, but still…
His mind drifted back to college, planning to backpack through Italy and France. He had postcards taped all around his dorm of all the monuments he wanted to see. The cathedral at Chartes, Montmarte, the Sistine Chapel, little snap shots of history etched into his naïve collegiate mind. But the postcard hanging above his bed was the Leaning Tower. He didn’t know why, never knew why, but that was where he always pictured himself when he daydreamed.
Internships, business school, marriage- there just was never enough time. He was always too busy.
A crackle on the intercom snapped him out of his reverie.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for your inconvenience. Free moving particles in the thermosphere are preventing our departure from Los Angeles. Please expect arrival time in New York to be pushed back to 9:20.”
He looked down at his watch.
8:15, it flashed on and off at him.
He was going to be late to work. This commute was killing him.
There just was never enough time.
