by submission | Nov 27, 2008 | Story
Author : Lillian Cohen-Moore
Friends are the people you call when you’re sick. Old lovers are the ones you call when you’re afraid you’re dying.
Times have changed.
We print a self-isolation guide in the front of phonebooks now. The Infected Hotline operates 24/7, 365 days a year. He called the hotline asking for someone to check him out. I asked to take his call as soon as it came in.
Leo has been infected once, with the UK strain. I listen and watch as he talks, sweat beading on his face. He’s scared this is not just a rickets-like resurgence. This is the real deal. The American mutation is more deadly than the Beijing. The American mutation carries a doubled risk of permanent brain damage in comparison to the Parisian virus. We’re both hand cuffed too far away to touch. Regulations and all that.
All I can do for him is smile.
Within the hour, a team will arrive. Leo Wyzotsky will either test positive or negative. If he’s negative, he’ll get counseling for the scare before he goes back home to England. If he’s positive, they’ll try to ID the strain.
They’ll do their best.
As for me?
I was bit by a twelve year old girl last night, who bled out on her way to the hospital. I had a choice when I came in here, but I ignored it. I didn’t tell my boss. I just asked for the next call. I was gentle when I got here. We talked. I walked him through what would come next. I hand-cuffed myself to the shower stall, after I cuffed Leo to the toilet. Its regulations, but it’s necessary.
It prevents us from trying to eat each other.
I’ve been talking him down for awhile, now.
They’ll test him first. Then they’ll me. If I test positive, they’ll take away my license. I’ll never be allowed in a Hot Room again. I’ll be confined to a desk for the rest of my life.
If you test three times in a row for American, it’s over. You don’t, you won’t—there is no coming back.
So I wait. 25 minutes. In 25 minutes, Leo will either test positive or negative.
I lick my lips and smile weakly.
“I’ve been up for about a day. It’s ok, Leo. Keep talking. I’m not going to fall asleep.”
I lost my husband during the first flush of the pandemic. I’ve never slept well since those days. They say part of it’s residual brain damage from the first infection.
In 20 minutes, they will evac Leo from this hotel room before they shoot me in the head. In the old days, we had friends to call when we were sick. Old lovers to call when you thought you might be dying.
Things don’t happen like they used to.
by submission | Nov 26, 2008 | Story
Author : Charles Spohrer
”EAT SAND NOW!”. The humans hit the hot sand as the mortar shell screamed towards them. The surrogates did not move. They stood still as the flowering debris sandblasted their metallic shells.
Hector made sure he landed on the ground behind the surrogates. They might not be too quick in the brain, but they sure could backtrack return fire. You just did not want to be in front of them when they did.
Hector was squad leader, which only meant he had survived the longest. The surrogates did not have rank, but there were only two other humans in his squad. Dwight was another draftee like himself. His parents couldn’t afford a replacement, so here he was in the middle of the desert.
Bennie, well. His parents ran out of money after his third surrogate got wasted. He owed three tours of duty now, and this was his first. That was the bargain. Those that could, paid for a metallic replacement. If your surrogate did not survive the tour of duty, you had to finish it out. The surrogates with the most trained neural nets were in the most demand and so fetched the highest prices. The cheapest ones, of course, had the least trained brains. They did not last long.
“Charlie squad. Move out”. The command came over Hector’s ear piece. He looked to Dwight, and said. “Ready?” Dwight nodded his head, and took a drag on the water tube. He moved to crouch behind one of the metal men.
Hector rolled over to Bennie. “Ok, here is what I want you to do. Let the tin cans lead. You stick close behind A-17. Keep him between you and the building. Ok? “ Bennie mumbled something. “Hey, don’t worry. A-17 knows what he is doing,“ said Hector. He patted Bennie on the shoulder, and then moved over behind another metal man.
“Ready. Standard frontal assault. Execute.” With that the surrogates moved towards the building. Hector saw two surrogates close up together in front of Dwight. Hector knew that overall control of tactics belonged to himself, but the others could make minor adjustments with individual surrogates. Hector did not demand perfect adherence to command and control. Surviving the fire fight came first. Some squad leaders micromanaged their missions, not always successfully.
“Bennie, stay close to A-17. He’s been around a long time, so use him.” Bennie closed ranks on the surrogate. Hector followed close behind his own tin can man.
Rocket propelled grenades took out the two surrogates on point. Machine gun fire erupted around them as they ran across the road. A few rounds pinged off the metal man in front of Hector.
The lead surrogate lobbed in a grenade through the doorway, and immediately went through. The explosion blew out the windows, the door, and some parts from the surrogate.
More surrogates leaped into the building. As the smoke cleared, metallic calls of all clear began to fill the haze.
He paused at the door, and looked down at the remains of the surrogate that had stormed the building. He thought to himself, they learn quick, or they don’t learn at all.
Dwight came out of the building, and said. “All secure.” He looked down at the mangled parts at Hector’s feet. “Hell of a way to pay for a war.”
Hector looked about. He couldn’t leave the surrogates milling about aimlessly. “Secure building. Execute,” he called.
by submission | Nov 24, 2008 | Story
Author : Jared R. Cloud
The General and the Secretary of State sat in the Oval Office, waiting for the new President to return from the bathroom. Although both had jumped in their seats when they first heard him vomit, he was on his third or fourth round now, and they were no longer startled by the sound. Finally, his stomach empty, the President walked out of the bathroom and sat down behind his desk without meeting his visitors’ eyes.
When he had composed himself, he looked up. “Pardon me. Something I ate didn’t agree with me, I suppose.”
The Secretary of State, a lifelong diplomat, nodded his head. “Of course, Mr. President.”
The General, who had been promoted for her victories in the field, not her skills at Pentagon politics, kept her silence.
“Just so I’m sure I understand the situation,” the President said, “can you give it to me again?”
The General stood up. The PowerPoint projector was still running and connected to her laptop. She quickly scanned through the slideshow until she came to the summary slides at the end.
“The alien spacecraft that took up orbit around the Earth eight months ago was, we now know, simply a scout. At the time, your predecessor questioned whether a ship of that size, with a crew of only three beings, was stable enough to make the trip through interstellar space without support.”
“Fine. I’ll call the old man first thing in the morning and apologize for all of the nasty things I said about him during the campaign. Skip to the part where the mothership shows up and the captain starts making demands.”
“Not just the captain of a ship, Mr. President,” the Secretary of State said. “The linguists we’ve had working on the language tell me that the word is closer in meaning to ‘king.’ Or ‘queen.’”
“Maybe you’re wrong about what the damn thing wants?”
The Secretary of State said, “We’re pretty confident, Mr. President. They think there’s something special up there, and they want it for themselves.”
“The ship’s defenses?” The President asked, pleading.
“The results from our one attack showed it to be impervious even to nukes, Mr. President,” the General said.
“And if they win, they’ll just take it? How?”
Nobody had an answer.
The intercom buzzed. “Mr. President. It’s time for your jiu-jitsu lesson.”
The General arched an eyebrow. “Jiu-jitsu, sir?”
“Taekwondo every morning. Judo every evening. Other martial arts in the afternoon, for variety.” The President stood to leave. “I’ve had to delegate most duties to the Vice President. He’s going to sit in this chair soon enough.”
The General and Secretary of State stood up as well. “Have a good lesson, Mr. President.”
The President smiled sadly. “It isn’t fair, is it? I mean, they could’ve told us before the election.”
#
The President enjoyed the light lunar gravity more than he thought he would. Alone as the aliens had directed, he felt strong and fast as he bounded into the airlock of the alien ship. His confidence seeped away when he realized how large the corridor was. He bounded unhappily into the amphitheater; he knew the seats were filled by aliens thrilling to see him or their own ruler die. War reduced to personal combat by the leaders of each side, and the President had — after the aliens had destroyed Lubbock as a demonstration — agreed. Win or lose, they’d promised to leave the Earth alone.
The alien king, twelve feet tall, entered the amphitheater. The President saw that he had claws.
The President wondered what nights would be like without the Moon.
by submission | Nov 23, 2008 | Story
Author : Alex Moisi
Maya knew that she was dying. You didn’t need to be a bio-mechanics expert to know that the nanoids inside her body were running out of energy. The climate and gravity of this remote planet were taxing the minuscule robots more than she had expected. Soon they would run out of energy, and without them her body would collapse on itself. She needed a booster shot, but there were no more. She had made sure of that when she set fire to her laboratory.
It was a shame, but it had to be done. She created the nanoids, dreaming of all the medical and engineering applications. But instead of doctors and scientists, the first to visit her were generals. They poked around with hungry glances, and kept asking the same questions.
“How soon can we give it to soldiers? How deadly can it make them? How dangerous?”
Call her an idealist, but she was sick of the endless wars. She knew where her research grant came from, but she had hoped the government would use the nanoids in hospitals. Slim chance. If it could kill someone, they would throw it onto the battlefield.
In the end she did the only reasonable thing. Looking back she felt a tinge of regret, maybe she had been stupid giving up on all those resources, the fame, the early retirement, but then again, she was sick of the air raid alarms and newscasts about another planet being destroyed, millions killed. A general promised to her, before leaving her laboratory busy with interns and robot researchers, that it will all be over when they will have this new weapon. But what if the enemy took a batch of nanoids for a dead body? What if everyone had super soldiers who could heal ten times faster, didn’t need spacesuits and could carry more weapons than a tank? Would it really be over?
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked the lioness in front of her.
The metallic head didn’t move. It was nothing more than a statue composed out of various alloys and organic connectors, but soon it would be much more. Maya smiled. She knew they would search for her, they would trace the spaceship she used to escape and they would find the planet. Her creation was too important to ignore, too much was invested in the tiny nanoids.
“But you’ll take care of them, won’t you?” she said.
She did not expect an answer. The creature’s eyes were empty, although soon they would be filled with the flow of nanoids. In a robotic shell, her creations could survive for centuries, and Maya would make sure they were programmed to defend themselves.
“I would love to see how they react inside a mechanical body,” she murmured. Sadly it could not be helped; without the tiny robots the alien planet would kill her in an instant. But, alas, unlike destruction, creation always required sacrifice.
by submission | Nov 22, 2008 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
At four in the morning the alarms went off. Lois hardly stirred, but I went downstairs to the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and then slogged my sorry ass to the control console, next to the laundry room.
Red lights glared from the temperature control panel. The needles showed an overtemp in the secondary thermocouple but normal temperatures in the primary, so I couldn’t tell if the relay was actually over-heating or if the secondary had failed again. I dialed down the master motor-control rheostat a couple of notches —losing precious speed— but the warning light didn’t go out, so instead of doing anything more I went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and waited until dawn.
I spent most of the day under the home. Replacing the thermocouple dimmed the warning light but I could feel, just by a touch on its titanium casing, that the number three stepper motor was running much too hot. I took the motor offline and spent a few hours tightening and replacing coolant lines. I inspected the narrow yard-tall wheels on the rear outboard truck assembly and ended up replacing the bearings on two of the twelve wheels.
Around noon Lois came down the stairs, shook her head and grinned at me. “Come on up for lunch, Herb,” she said. It was a nice day, cool for summer, so we ate sandwiches and watermelon on the veranda.
After lunch I climbed to the roof, and in the strong midday sun I dusted off the solar panels and checked the alignment on the control linkage. I stood for a while admiring our new cupola, built a few weeks ago toward the front of the house. It was expensive, but Lois and I both believed the cupola completed our home.
Lois invited the Smiths from next-door over for supper. I grilled steaks on the patio while Bill Smith drank my beer and Lois and Dorothy Smith sat gossiping. “Nice cupola, Herb,” Bill said, gloating.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Sure,” Bill said. “That thing must weigh a couple tons.” Bill’s home had been inching past mine for the last year. He’d gained nearly half a house on me.
“Lois and I love the cupola,” I said.
“You should have gotten the high-performance relays instead. Like I did,” Bill said.
“I think the cupola is beautiful!” Dorothy said with a smile.
After the Smiths left we cleaned up, and I went to the control console and moved the master rheostat up a notch. No warning lights came on. The indicators showed that we’d moved a little less than thirty-three inches that day.
At dusk Lois and I climbed the stairs to the cupola. We opened the windows, let the breeze in. “Bill isn’t racing you, you know,” Lois said.
I put my arm around her shoulders. “The hell he isn’t,” I replied, and I kissed her.
From the cupola we could see the neighborhood as it stretched toward the horizon, each home moving at its own good speed. We were heading toward the sunset, the sky before us streaked with red and gold and salmon. I was happy.
From the cupola I could see that, from here, it was all down hill.
