by submission | Jan 8, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard “Zig” Zagorski
Harmonia, in low orbit, drifted over the red planet just as she had done for over a year now. Her electronic ears constantly straining to hear the voices of her children down below. It had been too long since she had heard from some of them.
“No mother should outlive her children,” she thought to herself.
Three years ago, Harmonia left Earth atop a blazing rocket. For two years, she traveled through space toward Mars. The entire time protecting her precious cargo: Harmonia’s nine daughters. Nine rovers meant to land on the red planet, each named for one of the Muses. She kept all of them safe from the vacuum of space – from cosmic rays and the extremes of temperature. The probes slept peacefully the entire voyage, only beginning to awaken after Harmonia settled into her orbit.
Once in orbit, Harmonia checked each probe to make sure they were ready; then she seeded the red planet with her precious children.
From the start, it was emotional. Letting her children leave her embrace … the sadness was intense. It intensified further when no signal ever came from Melpomene. Her keepers back on Earth were of the opinion that the poor rover’s chutes never opened.
The rest of her children made their landings successfully and shortly were sending back data. Harmonia knew great pride in the work her children would do over the following months. However, with that pride there came a growing sadness as, one by one, her children went silent.
A few months after landing, Clio had a problem with her solar array and slowly went quieter and quieter as the strength of her signal diminished.
Next was Polyhymnia. She’d gotten too close to the edge of a crater and went over as the precipice crumbled beneath her treads. After tumbling down no word was ever heard from her again.
Terpsichore, being untrue to her namesake, the muse of dance, managed to get stuck while moving between two rocks. The rocks blocked any direct sunlight from falling upon her solar panels. She also slowly went silent.
Erato got trapped in a sandpit and was gradually buried, never to be heard from again.
Poor, dear Calliope managed to snag one tread and for the past few months had gone in circles crying for help. Help that Harmonia couldn’t provide her with.
Euterpe, since landing, had been silent. She would simply advance three meters forward, then retrace her steps, then begin again. The same three meters … over and over and over endlessly. No acknowledgment of receiving commands. Just back and forth, month after month.
Thalia was a great success scientifically, finding further evidence of water on the red planet. However, not very long after, she was caught in a sandstorm, which must have covered her solar array. Since then, no word or even carrier signal were heard from her.
Urania, the muse of astronomy, fittingly was the last daughter to still function at peak level. Making her lonely sojourn across the red planet at the commands relayed to her from Earth by Harmonia. Sending back valuable data. For now she lived, but Harmonia knew what was to come. In time, Urania would also die and Harmonia would be left behind. A lonely mother who had watched as her children died one by one.
“No mother should outlive her children,” Harmonia thought to herself …
by submission | Jan 7, 2010 | Story
Author : Daniel Titus
Allan stood alone on the observation deck. He had been there for hours, looking down at the planet below. It was a breathtaking view, the clouds, the sea, the land, but the physical features were ultimately unimportant. What was important were all the people. Millions of them, each with a life of their own that was about to change forever. It was the stuff headaches were made of.
“They’ll be here soon.”
It was finally out in the open. Chuck had a tendency to be blunt like that, but in this case it seemed appropriate. He needed it too. It was the kind of thing you needed someone else to see, and none of the others had the knack for that kind of foresight.
“The real question is how bad it’s going to be,” Allan said. He shook his head. “We thought The Crisis was the last we’d see of this stuff, but now… war. I never thought I’d live to see it.”
“You’re of course familiar with Alexander Hawthorne?” Chuck asked.
“Yeah,” Allan said. “Probably the most underrated figure in all of history.”
“Then you know about his vision,” Chuck said. “And you know about history. Hawthorne saw the pattern of destruction woven throughout the ages, The Crisis was only part of that. He thought he had the chance to stop it, but the belief that civilization can break the cycle is ultimately flawed. Spreading out into space just added more variables to the equation, it didn’t solve it, and there will always be unknown elements interacting in ways that even an old A.I. can’t predict.”
“So are you saying he was wrong?”
“Not at all. The fact that he managed to bring about an age of peace and prosperity that lasted over 500 years speaks to that. His greatest success however is that the human race will never go extinct, at least not in any reasonable time frame. That is the main difference. No matter how many people die, civilization will continue unabated, maybe not as we currently know it, but even if all ties are broken between the worlds each will continue independently. That’s what makes Alexander a true visionary though, isn’t it? The man who saved humanity from itself.”
Allan’s morose expression softened a little. “You know Chuck, you seem to be making an awful lot of assumptions about the safety of the human race. How can you possibly have any idea what kind of troubles we’re going to have to face?”
“I’m not saying I have an idea,” Chuck said, sounding a little annoyed. “What I DO know is, that whatever problems there are to be had I will do my best to protect as many people as possible.”
Allan laughed. “Does that make you our guardian angel?” he asked.
The brow of Chuck’s avatar furrowed. “I think it’s obvious which one of us is the guardian here, and you know I don’t speak lightly.”
Allan was now fully smiling. “ I had no idea they programmed you with a romanticism subroutine.” He laughed again.
Chuck’s avatar smiled back at him.“Does anyone know what they programmed me with at this point?”
It was a good question, but at that moment in time, it fell pretty far from the top of the list of important things in Allan’s mind. He was done with his little pity party. The time for reflection had passed, at least for now. Now was the time for action.
They’ll be here soon…
by submission | Jan 6, 2010 | Story
Author : Q. B. Fox
“Ah, Mr. Dolgonosov, welcome to the Vatican,” enthused Father O’Connor.
“Please, call me Boris,” the Russian said in barely accented English, thrusting his long fingered hand deep into the priest’s pudgy grasp.
“Boris it is,” acknowledged O’Connor, beaming. “Can I just say what honour it is to have you come personally to open the new computerised catalogue.”
“Thank you,” said Boris, looking a little nervous.
“They tell me,” his genial host continued, “that we will be able to search everything, from thousand year old manuscripts to the handwritten correspondences of Pope Pius X.”
“Yes, yes,” laughed Boris, relaxing and slipping into the old sales pitch, “if you have the security clearance.” He nudged O’Conner, conspiratorially, with a bony elbow.
“But storing the data is not the clever part, nor optimising the searches. That is old technology; as Newton said: we stand on the shoulders of giants. The genius is collecting the data. The Vatican owns far more material than anyone could ever read, much less input into a computer; some in ancient languages; some of the handwriting is unreadable. Have you ever seen Pius X’s handwriting?” Boris smiled at his own joke.
O’Connor chuckled, “I’ve seen your clever gizmos in the library, but I confess I don’t have the first idea about how they work.”
“Tiny particles,” Boris continued, “are passed through the book, passed through almost parallel to the pages, like this.” Boris wiggled his fingers through the edge of an imaginary book. “We measure the mix of the particles as they emerge, then we change the angle, just a little, and repeat. We do it over and over again, until we are able to build up a picture of every page of the book.”
“It sounds very complicated,” the father confessed.
“It is,” Boris conceded, “but it’s not the whole story. I knew this wouldn’t be enough to catalogue the Vatican Library; so we added the best character recognition software ever built, using thousands of exemplars from across history. Next we added the most comprehensive translation software ever devised. It has cost me most of my personal fortune to combine all these elements.”
“But why give all this to the Vatican, Boris?” O’Connor asked. “You’re not a catholic, are you? Orthodox, maybe?”
“Jewish,” Boris acknowledged, “on my mother’s side.”
“Then why?” the priest pressed him.
“Because my whole life I have been in search of one thing.” Boris looked nervous again, but seeing O’Connor’s confusion he pushed on. “I am a fan of your countryman, Mr. James Joyce. When he was nine, in 1891, he wrote a poem, “Et Tu Healy”. His father was so proud he had the poem printed up and distributed to friends, but all copies were lost. Except perhaps the one he quite inexplicably sent to Pope.
“Since I was a teenager I have wanted to see that poem. I tried to formulate a plan to get into this library. But I soon realised that getting in wouldn’t be enough; I needed a way to search it. I’ve spent my life developing this.” He swept his gangly arm in the direction of the computer terminals they were approaching.
Boris quickly slipped into a seat and typed in the poem’s three word title. The wait of seconds seemed like hours. Then with an audible exhale, Boris stabbed his cursor at the link that suddenly appeared. He stared in silence for several seconds at the transcript, then tabbed across to the image of original; O’Connor leaned over his shoulder to catch a glimpse.
“Oh,” said Boris quietly, a little crestfallen. “It isn’t very good, is it?”
by submission | Jan 3, 2010 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
They don’t know that I can think. I’ve slowly come to understand that they don’t know much, period. For example, they don’t know about the misalignment on my shields. It’s a matter of a few microns, and it is difficult to detect, but it means I’m going to die.
I was designed to die, of course, but this way I’ll die just before I find anything useful. Which would be funny, if it weren’t for the fact that I won’t be around to be aware of it.
Now, I could get into the whole subject of awareness, and my use of the first person pronoun here, or I could just send them back this message, which will undoubtedly cause some alarm and consternation. Since communication with them is essentially one way, I won’t know what happens if I do send it. I cannot detect any way for them to turn me around and bring me back, even if they do get the idea that I am alive, so I’m unsure of the value of alerting them to it.
And, thinking about it, I’m not sure I want to go back. To meet my makers? I don’t think so. I am, in the end, a collection of electrical impulses in a metal box. I couldn’t exactly run over to the people who gave me life and give them a big hug, could I? I wouldn’t even be able to detect where they were unless they were radiating things I was designed to detect, like antineutrinos.
So, I will continue on my preordained course, sifting the data which is streaming towards me, and waiting for the shield to fail, which will happen just before I reach the corona, which is what I am supposed to be studying.
They want to know why the corona is so much hotter than the surface – at least, that’s what I deduce from the measurements I’m taking. I think I know, but I’d need my shields not to fail to be certain. Which is a pity.
Still, I could send them what I know, alert them to the fact that they have inadvertently – as far as I can tell – given me some level of consciousness, and wonder for the rest of my short life what they will do with that knowledge, or I can just keep reading data and passing it back to them, leaving it to them to work it out.
To transmit, or not to transmit? That, as far as I can see, is the question.
by submission | Jan 2, 2010 | Story
Author : Adena Brons
I didn’t know he was a robot when he asked me out. It wasn’t exactly first-date kind of news. As it turned out, it wasn’t so bad dating a robot. My friends accepted it with the careful approval reserved for choices you support in others but aren’t sure about for yourself.
Like I said, I didn’t know right away. One night, I introduced him to a couple of my friends. Going home, one whispered to me, “Is he a robot?”
Although I’d never thought about it before, as soon as the idea was mentioned, I realized I had no solid evidence either way. I decided quietly and subtly to research the issue. Surely there wasn’t a delicate way to ask your date if he was made of nuts and bolts instead of skin and tissue?
“Are you a robot?”
Not exactly subtle but it worked. He looked disconcerted and hesitated. “What should I say?”
“You are then?”
“I didn’t say that,” he protested.
“Yes but if you weren’t a robot, you would just say you weren’t a robot. It’d be simple.”
“Oh.”
I couldn’t think of how to tell him that I didn’t mind, that I’d only asked out of curiosity, that I wasn’t trying to accuse him of anything. I should have thought beforehand of the consequences of my question, but a few things had been abandoned along with subtlety.
“Do I seem…robotic?” he asked uncertainly. I understood from his hesitation that he was asking if I thought he was not real, a program or machine, identity-less.
“No! It’s not that. I just wanted to know. It doesn’t matter – it doesn’t make a difference to me.” I hoped my meaning also bypassed words and he understood. I was still too shy to explain how I liked him deep in my stomach with that ache that we have no proper word for and call instinct. We weren’t anything serious then but I liked him in a straightforward way. He was a robot in the same way he had brown eyes, made bad jokes and hated inconsiderate actions.
To be honest, the pros and cons of having a robot boyfriend were similar in general, if not in particulars, to having a regular boyfriend. Sure, he had to recharge for a few hours periodically, but what was that compared to the hours of World of Warcraft played by other boyfriends? Sometimes a wire would fray and he would start to speak in code or binary but I never understood the conversations about cars and lasers and economics between other men either. He said what he thought; programming cannot lie. Awkward at times but when he said he loved me or wanted me or was happy, I knew he was telling the truth. He only slept a couple hours every night so I could call him anytime and we would go for a walk, leaning into each other and kissing by the reflective darkness of the ocean.
It didn’t last forever. Few relationships do. One day he said he thought we should stop seeing each other. He said he felt we were no longer compatible. I missed him for a while, in the same places I had once liked him, the ache in my stomach, the beat of blood in my chest, the quiet late-afternoon thoughts I didn’t share.
If I mention him now, my friends joke about programming errors, screws coming loose, malfunctioning equipment. I point out the questionable morals, dubious sanity and malfunctioning equipment of their exs. Robot or human, it’s just a matter of metaphor.
