by submission | Aug 4, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Saus
She is within two hexes before my character notices her perfume. She is approaching from behind. I left-toggle the camera angle back to third person, floating above his head. Minicams hover and spin, filling in the the peripheral things a 120 degree first person field of view misses. She has surprised me, and the transition is faster than I like. A brief wave of nausea flows through my stomach. My character puts a hand on his stomach as well.
Her business suit, usually stiffened into two dimensional polygons of fabric, is wrinkled from her day at work. It is still stiff enough to offer a pleasing contrast to the soft inverted arches of her hair. Click left, right, mouse gesture, and my character moves smoothly towards her. She kisses my character’s cheek all moist warm lips until she notices the eyes.
“Chaz, damn it!” She shoves, and the perspective wobbles. It makes it hard to read the word balloon over her head, but my text-to-speech rig is good enough that I still understand her.
She glares up and back, towards the print of the Warhol Campbell Soup cans behind my character. She draws an imaginary line between its head and the technicolor cans.
“Get back in there, Chaz.”
My fingers fly, and I hear my character’s voice: “Wrong side.” A quick gesture, and he smirks, too.
She slaps my character – bioforce feedback loops simulate it well – then looks dead-on at my viewpoint. Her wedding ring slips easily off her finger, smooth and elegant as a practiced rocketjump. I up the resolution and see her eyes are misted over.
“Remember this, Chaz? Remember the promises we made? I made them to you, not… not this shell.”
Clickety-clack. Enter. “This is me. This is my character.”
Her ring hits my… the character’s chest.
“I wish you had never gotten that damn implant, Chaz.”
She stalks out of the room. She does not need to pack – the bag is waiting – and she leaves our …the… apartment. Several option icons flash softly at me. Follow. Stay. Sleep. Watch TV.
I do not select them. My face is still warm from the force of her hand slapping my character.
I want to restart. I want to start the level over, to try again.
That icon never appears.
by submission | Aug 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
“Now commencing system test number twenty-three. Ship designation VX1965, given name Skipper, are you receiving me”.
“Affirmative”
Jacob sighed and knuckled his eyes as his other hand reached to the desk to cradle his warm coffee. He wasn’t looking forward to this. He’d designed this model ships core processor and knew the programming like the back of his hand. That it was acting the way it was…
“Skipper, give access of your computing systems to Engineer Hestan.”
Jacob raised his head from his hand to look over to where Keire sat close to the ship, with a remote access terminal resting on her knees.
“Negative”
Keire looked up at him and shook her head, confirming what the ship had already told them.
“Skipper, explain your refusal to cooperate”
Muted white noise sounded in Jacob’s headset. He stood facing the cruiser, blinking slowly as arc-welders and sledgehammers danced behind his eyes.
Keire shifted on her seat, adjusting the terminal. “Maybe if you-”
“I shouldn’t have to”
“But maybe if you were to try…”
Jacob turned his head and looked wearily at her. Keire shrugged and turned her attention to the terminal, randomly tapping panels while she waited. Jacob sighed again and looked back at the ship. Clearly it was going to be one of those days.
“Skipper, can you give system access to Engineer Hestan, please?”
Jacob closed his eyes, unsure of which result he was hoping for. More futile struggles, proving Keire wrong or a chance to get this damn test done. He glanced over to the engineer, noting her smile as the notebook on her lap lit up. A few more taps, and she looked up at him, smiling wide.
“I’m in. Connection’s slow, but it’s steady. We should be able to get the test done fairly quickly now”.
He nodded, noting the commencement of the test in his own log.
“I just don’t know why we have to go to this much bother, each and every time”
“Because you know as well as I do that machine has a mind of it’s own. And if I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was sulking”.
by submission | Jul 31, 2009 | Story
Author : Helstrom
Paydirt rolled deftly away from the asteroid we’d hid her behind and launched a volley across the Wayfarer’s bow. Some junior officer now had the task of rushing the captain out of his cabin. It was exactly those few minutes we used to put all the dominoes in place. By the time anyone qualified was in the big chair, the whole match would already be falling on him like a house of cards. Checkmate!
“Drop the birds, Jerry!” I shouted at the coxswain, “It’s time to show these fools they’ve met their match!”
“It’s Jeff, sir,” Came the tired reply, “Launching your squadron.”
I gripped the controls of my fighter as she was flung from the Paydirt’s rotating section. Going from artificial gravity to free-fall sure got the adrenalin going in a rush! The boosters kicked in and I pulled her into a tight bank towards the Wayfarer. We had her cornered against the vast expanse of interplanetary space – there would be no escape.
“Tumbling Dice! Are you with me?”
“On your lead, sir. Ready when you are.”
I switched to the hailing channel: “Wayfarer! This is Zack Daring of the Tumbling Dice – you’re up the river without a chance here, prepare to be boarded and pillaged! Surrender now and no-one needs to get hurt much.”
“Tumbling Dice, this is Wayfarer,” – sounded like the captain, guess he liked to get up early – “We are unarmed and well insured. We are ready to surrender all valuables and cargo in exchange for the safety of our ship, passengers, and crew.”
“Huh! I’d expected more fight out of you. Very well – pack everything nicely and jettison it out your port cargo bay. And don’t even think about opening fire… We’ve got you pinned down like a jumpy cat!”
“Uh… Repeat, Tumbling Dice, we are unarmed. Please stand by to receive our valuables out the port cargo bay in fifteen minutes.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I’d never get any work done! Make it ten.”
“Ah… Affirmative… Tumbling Dice, we will comply in ten minutes.”
I allowed myself a wide grin as I craned my head around to survey the little masterpiece unfolding against the backdrop of Jupiter’s swirling crescent. Paydirt was slowly circling Wayfarer, brandishing wicked broadside guns against the cruise liner’s pristine panorama decks. Behind me, in a tight V formation, were my other fighters, each armed with high-powered lasers and nuclear missiles easily capable of ripping apart a ship ten times the Wayfarer’s size – but radioactive loot was hard to sell these days!
It took the passengers seven minutes flat to dump all their valuables into the cargo hold and have them flushed out into space. The retrieval boat picked them up and reported a pretty penny aboard.
“Wayfarer! We have taken our loot and we’ll be on our way. I’m not surprised you didn’t put up more of a fight, you’ve got as much spine as a sloth!”
Josh or Jack or whatever the hell his name was chimed in: “Sir, sloths are vertebrates. They have spines.”
“I know, John – but take that away and all you have left is a lot of… Fur. Now let’s get the hell out of here and mosey along!”
So, there was no fight today, but we caught a good booty jumping a defenseless ship – hell, I was a pirate, and with a name like Zack Daring, what else was I going to be?
by submission | Jul 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Ross Baxter
The ducting was tighter than expected, and full of choking dust and accumulated detritus. Filth caked my uniform, the billowing clouds of dirt coating the inside of my mouth and making my eyes stream. But I was nearly there. I struggled forwards to the mesh vent to lever it open and it crashed to the floor below with a painfully loud clatter. I held my breath; there was no knowing where in the ship the pirates were, and capture would result in a swift and violent death.
Dropping heavily to the floor I painfully focused my grit-filled vision. The Control Room of the Happy-go-lucky was mercifully empty. The irony of the vessel’s name still brought a thin smile to my lips; the ship was anything but that – the last six months since signing on being both unpleasant and humiliating. The other eight crew members, all relative youngsters, had been together since being cadets and formed a tight clique which bordered on the incestuous. Being more then twice the age of the eldest, and a decorated veteran of both Segmentum Wars, had instantly singled me out. They could barely bring themselves to talk to me, and when they did it was usually a joke at my expense. Long days passed without a word being said or even an acknowledgment, but I preferred that to the snide comments. The others referred to me sneeringly as “Mister Experience,” which stemmed from when the skipper, playing to her sycophantic audience, had inquired as to exactly how I’d got to be so old, given heavy losses of the last wars. I muttered something about guile and experience, which had earned both loud guffaws and my new moniker.
But they were not so cock-sure now. The cloaked pirate vessel had clamped itself to our forward accommodation section before we even knew they were there. Within minutes they cut through the outer hull and boarded us. We had only enough time to retreat to the citadel, a small armoured section of the ship designed to provide a modicum of security in events such as this. The skipper had not even managed to send a distress signal.
The panic in the citadel was almost comical. Pirates never spared anyone; once they had taken what they wanted, which may include the ship itself, a quick death would be the best one could expect. Only now did the crew of the Happy-go-lucky turn to “Mister Experience”, and I assured them I would put my guile and experience to good use. Christ knows how they expected me to turn the tables on the cut-throat boarders, but they were happy to clutch at whatever straw was offered.
Quickly scrutinizing the plasma-engine controls, I closed all vents and maximised the port and starboard feeds. I withdrew the over-ride key and pocketed it; the plasma drives would be critical in around two minutes and could not now be closed down. Claxons screamed throughout the ship but it was already too late.
I bolted for the aft-escape pod and strapped myself in. With only myself in the ten-man craft there was plenty of room, and enough rations to last for weeks until rescue. Yanking the red launch control I braced myself against the acceleration as the pod fired itself into the void. I braced again moments later as a huge shockwave, the violent epitaph of the Happy-go-lucky and the pirate ship, flung the pod still faster away. I smiled; living proof of exactly how guile and experience can ensure one reaches old age.
by submission | Jul 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Ian Rennie
Richard reached for the jug of water on the coffee table and stopped, face caught between a frown and a smile. He sat back in his chair and spoke to the couple.
“Mrs Lyell, Patricia, you were saying that Thomas had been distant lately.”
The woman on the couch glanced at her husband uneasily, then spoke.
“For the last three weeks when I’ve got home from work, he’s been sat in the front room with the lights off. He doesn’t talk to me when I get in, just waits for me to say something. He’ll sit there in silence until I do. He never starts conversations any more, won’t sit at the table with me for dinner. It feels like I’ve done something wrong and he won’t tell me what it is.”
Richard turned to the man on the couch.
“Thomas, do you have anything you want to say about this?”
The man stared back, stubborn. Richard knew without asking that he was here only at the woman’s insistence.
“Sometimes, I don’t have much to talk about.” he said, pausing after this for so long that Richard was about to ask a follow up question when he continued, “I don’t do much any more, so I don’t have much to say. I’m happy to talk, I just don’t know what to say.”
Patricia shot a despairing look at Richard, who kept his eyes on Thomas.
“Mrs Lyell, the problem is that your husband is dead.”
The woman looked up in shock at the words, and then, just as quickly, looked at her husband. He seemed not to react. Richard continued, gentle words with iron cores.
“He died of a heart attack two years ago. You had him restored from a digital backup last year, but he’s not your husband any more. He’s an electronic representation. He can’t touch anything, because he’s a projection. I’m only able to talk to him today because we have a projection rig in the building. He doesn’t do much because he can’t leave the house. He’s not a real person.”
Tears welled in Patricia’s eyes.
“But I don’t think that! He’s perfectly real to me. I don’t think any of the things you said.”
Richard looked over at Thomas.
“Your husband does. Don’t you, Thomas?”
The hologram of Thomas Lyell looked at the floor, refusing to meet the counselor’s gaze. Finally he nodded. Richard turned back to the sobbing widow.
“Patricia, after the heart attack, they gave you grief counseling. They never gave it to Thomas. You don’t need marriage counseling, you need bereavement therapy.”
The consultation ended fairly quickly after that. The problem was identified, and Thomas was already looking more hopeful five minutes later when he was switched off for transit back to the house. As Mrs Lyell was leaving, Richard’s assistant popped her head around the door.
“Your next client isn’t for an hour, Dr Furr. Want me to switch you off in the meantime?”
“No, I like the view out of the window at this time of day. Are you heading to lunch?”
“Yeah, I’ll be back in 45 minutes.”
“See you then.”
She left. Richard sat in his chair and stared at the water jug.
He was thirsty. He’d been thirsty for four years, ever since they had switched him on and a lawyer he had never met before explained about the car crash. The water jug was an affectation, something to make him feel more human.
These days, despite what he said to his clients, feeling human was hard to come by.
