by submission | Jul 26, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Holland
Their time was up – 100 years had past. Fourteen vitrified bodies began the slow warming process. The cryoprotectants that had saved their bodies from the ravages of water’s freezing expansion were slowly pumped out, replaced with fresh blood. The centennial slumber was over.
One week later the fourteen men met in a comfortable conference room. The men were all intelligent, ambitious, successful, and borderline insane. Most were hard working citizens by profession, but they were all compulsive gamblers by addiction.
It had begun the instant millionaire Peter Mortiarty, half eaten doughnut in hand while sitting in a cheap plastic chair at the Tuesday night meeting of the local chapter of Gambler’s Anonymous, had a sudden thought. He loved gambling. He was good at it, and he had made a fortune at it in the stock market. Mortiarty abruptly stood up and left the meeting – right in the middle of Donald’s sobbing confession of a brief, but torrid affair with a video poker machine in the back corner of a bar. Thirteen people, two months, and 86 million dollars later, Mortiarty set in motion the ultimate game of proposition gambling. Fourteen players would wager on the future 100 years from now – then freeze themselves to see the results. It was the ultimate gambler’s dream that was coming to fruition at this very moment.
Bill Kearney, the moderator who had been hired by Mortiarity’s trust fund, brought the meeting to order.
“Gentlemen, welcome to 2150 A.D. I trust your sleep was uneventful. If everyone is ready and remembers the rules, we will begin.”
Murmurs of agreement rose from the room. There had been extensive rule setting beforehand concerning allowable wagers, determination of odds, and undercutting.
“Every wager has been looked over by a panel of experts and the items have been selected in random order. Wager #1: Portugese will emerge as the new international language – No.”
Several of the men snickered and glanced over in the direction of Marvin Hasgrow, a Fortune 500 CEO. “What?” he exclaimed. “Davis gave 240 to 1 on that!”
A scoreboard kept a running total of each player’s score, changing after each wager was awarded. Davis moved up slightly to seize the early lead.
“Wager #2: The exact value of Pi will be determined – No.”
Joey Dollins, a mathematician, smirked smugly across the room at Hussein Powell, another mathematician.
The announcements continued; each one was met with mixtures of groans and cheers, laughter and tears, glaring and high-fiving. The wagers ranged from World War III to the price of pineapples, from intergalactic exploration and colonization to the number of Chicago Cub’s World Series victories. The drama continued well into the third day.
Throughout the entire process, each man exhibited a drunken giddiness that could only manifest in union with the satisfaction of a deep, powerful addiction. Experiencing this euphoric, exhilarating rush was the reason of their existence. Their hands were shaky and sweaty, pupils dilated, and breathing shallow – a feat only the purest of gambling could inspire in all fourteen of them at once.
In the end, James Griggs, a polymer chemist, emerged as the highest point winner and wore the ecstatic smile of a first grader after scoring his first soccer goal. Peter Mortiarty finished a disappointing third and sat slumped over, sulking.
The initial thrill already fading away, the fourteen now faced the task of reintegrating into society, seeing and learning how thing operated 100 years in the future. They had to learn fast. In one year’s time, they would all meet again for another round of wagers and another 100 years of slumber.
by submission | Jul 25, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Odhner
I can’t stop staring at the massive crater, watching the clouds of dust that blow out past its rim before curling down into the bowl and dissipating. For the hundredth time I wonder why the crater hasn’t filled up with water; maybe it just doesn’t rain anymore. I always forget to ask. A lack of rain would explain the dust that tints the sky red, that covers the ruins of the city and transforms them from twisted buildings into indistinct burial mounds. I had decided that some virus or pollutant had killed the plants and that, in turn, had allowed the soil to blow freely… but maybe it was just a simple lack of rain.
The robot glides noiselessly through the doorway with my lunch.
“Greetings! I have the meal you requested!” They always sound excited. I take the tray and place it on the table by the window.
The spindly metal creature does its equivalent of standing at attention and asks the same thing as always – “Is there any other service I can provide?” I tell it I have some questions and it waits eagerly. I’ve already tried asking about the crater, asking for the location of any other humans, asking to travel. I try asking about the rain this time.
“I’m sorry, weather information is not currently available!”
Of course not. Always the same answer, with the automated systems trying to access networks that no longer exist. I allow the robot to leave, and go back to staring out the window.
The landscape is hard to read with the buildings knocked over and covered in dust, but the more I think about it the more I’m sure my old apartment should be in the crater – if it even still existed by the time whatever it was happened. I leave the bland recycled food and wander downstairs, past floor after floor of empty offices and idle robots. I stop on the ground level for a moment to once again look at the electronic notice on the main doors – “Until further notice the government has implemented a mandatory lockdown for public safety reasons…” before heading to the basement where the hum of the building’s independent power plant vibrates up through the soles of my shoes. Once more I pace down the long hallway with the countless cryogenic chambers, the time capsules filled with what could be the only other humans on Earth.
I want to smash all of the electronics so that the robots are forced to revive everyone, but I know that most of them were frozen when they were already dead or about to be. I asked if others had been healthy and had set a specific date for decanting like myself, but the robot excitedly informed me that it couldn’t give out privileged client information. If I forced the robots to open them all up, thaw them all out, wouldn’t it be worth it if even one person survived? I know I won’t do it. I can’t stand the thought of killing any of them even though I know that they’ll never wake up, that someday the power will fail and they will seamlessly transition from sleep to death. Some of it is selfish too; I’m not sure how many people the robots can provide for. Better to play it safe, lonely though I am. Heading back to the stairs, I take one last look back along the endless vault of frozen humanity. Maybe tomorrow. For now, I head back upstairs to watch the sun set over the crater.
by submission | Jul 23, 2009 | Story
Author : Lliir
Mary Ellen Gratcke had never contemplated murder before. She’d never felt so betrayed, helpless, and naked before, either. A mere thought, a flip of a switch, and the killing began. The fluid levels in the special bath that protected her betrayer from the dangers of hyperspace flight ebbed, then began plunging.
98%
94%
She reflected long and bitterly on the deception that had rendered her nothing more than a brain in nourishing liquid, navigating a ship. So much for the Fountain of Youth. So much for saving her grandson, Frank.
“C’mon, Grandma! Faster!” Perpetual energy is amply manifest in small children, and though she’d put up a good fight, failing knees and lungs never let her keep up with the four year old whenever he came to visit. When she’d collapse into her chair, Frank would clamber onto her lap, nestle his head under her chin, and gently stroke her face.
“It’s okay, Grandma,” he’d say. “I have to take naps sometimes, too.”
54%
“Grandma,” Frank had said, as he lie in that hospital bed, “I hope I live to be as old as you.”
Mary Ellen just chuckled, though her daughter and son-in-law had blanched.
“I hope you live to be even older, Sweetheart,” and she had clutched his tiny, shriveling hand. In her dying heart she whispered, “I hope you live to see next year.”
Doctor Lawton had given Frank seven months unless he could get Tranenamine, a rare medication that Lawton hadn’t been able to find anywhere within eighty parsecs–at least a year’s journey by the fastest ships Mary Ellen knew of.
37%
“Mrs. Gratcke?” that calm voice of wickedness had said.
“Yes?”
“How would you like to cheat death? You and your grandson?”
Too good to be true, but… “I’m listening.”
23%
“I’ll try it first,” she’d told the liar. “To see if it’s safe for him.”
15%
She hadn’t had the chance to see Frank a final time before the procedure. And now, she had no eyes to behold him anyway.
“Grandma,” he had whispered, half-coughing, the day before the liar came.
“Yes, Sweetheart?”
“They told me in church today that I’d go to Heaven. Will you come play with me when you get to Heaven?”
She could only turn away and hide the tears.
7%
She wanted to smile at the victory she’d win for justice by ridding the universe of an awful man.
2%
“Grandma?”
“Yes, Sweetheart,” she’d choked.
“They told me in church today ‘Thou shalt not kill.'”
In the now, Mary Ellen’s conscious gasped. The switch was reset. Her captor lived.
********
Three days later, Robert Choisse congratulated himself on his fastest delivery run ever–six months round trip for that toure– grateful for the cerebral navigation system that sped his flight. He regretted that the system had gone haywire, but pull a plug, problem solved.
“Thanks for your business, Mrs. Homan,” he said as a lady tearfully signed for the shipment of Tranenamine, “Give my regards to the little guy.”
by submission | Jul 21, 2009 | Story
Author : Adam Zabell
Commander Deborah Sagmeiser began the ‘big reveal’ of Project Beta. This briefing used to be a formality which celebrated the human race. She looked across the table at a bespectacled middle-aged man, brought into the fold against her better judgement, and wondered how much room for celebration was left.
“Time and space travel,” she explained, “use identical but polarized technology. Like those elementary school cartoons showing self-propagating, transverse oscillating waves of electric and magnetic fields, the physical laws of interstellar travel are twinned with intrachronological transfer.” First Physicist Nikolayev’s eyes grew wide as his scientific intuition processed the implications. His previous assignment had been Project Coeus, whose hyperspatial engineering had drilled Chang’s Five Theorems into his soul.
Commander Sagmeiser tapped a display screen to reveal the Sixth Theorem. “Outside of Project Beta, FP Nikolayev, this collection of variables and constants are an expensive and ruthlessly guarded secret. Within, the past several centuries have seen it used to great effect.”
“It is a reasonable approximation to say there are two timelines measuring the existence of humanity. They branched five hundred years ago, subjective, because Project Beta achieved what nature could not. For two dozen generations, a fleet of C5T ships explored a sterile universe. Discovering rocky planets in every astronomical ecosphere, none of which could manage more than a kind of proto-life. Collections of nucleic and amino and betain acids, barely self-replicating, a light broth in salty water. Psychosocial analysis showed our species on an inevitable descent to suicide because of cosmic loneliness.”
“Within that context,” the Commander continued, “Project Beta developed the C6T technology. Eighty objective-years ago, we finished our prototype ship and went back some four billion years to fertilize the most promising worlds. We returned at intervals to cultivate a spectrum of cultures a bit slower and poorer than ours in preparation for when the C5T survey ships were scheduled to arrive. Five hundred sub-years ago, that was the Fluvuluvians. Twenty years ago, the G’trn.”
Commander Sagmeiser paused, savoring the last moments of Nikolayev’s innocence. “There was much debate within our Sociological Unit about how we should balance exobio aggression; in the end we settled for enmity from every fourth species. The inevitable wars would cost millions of lives and billions of dollars, but our racial ennui had stopped before it started.”
“Having created in our own image, we made certain none of those races would independently develop time travel. Usually a simple matter of giving some desperate alien physicist the first Five Theorems, we short-circuited any natural discovery on every foreign world. Let one of those seedlings peek behind the curtain of history, and the consequences would be disastrous. It’s why Project Beta is always and forever exclusively human, why joining our family is always a one-way trip.”
“We’ve successfully managed time, our most precious resource, for millennia with only modest intrusion. That all changed last week; the C5T ship Yoolis Night has discovered a race we never seeded.”
by submission | Jul 19, 2009 | Story
Author : Jamison B. Medcalf
Technical officer Jones had had his first job at 12 during the 2127 crash following the Antarctic War. Those were simpler times when perma-jacks that fed the Internet into your brain were less common.
Nowadays only those aboard colony ships got sleep. Deep frozen sleep for years in the void of space while people on Earth had their brains awake 24-7 thanks to the new drug, Ap. Ten years off your life for only having to sleep once a week.
Colony ships like the Rosetta were needed to set up the seeds of a new city on some far off world so that great Transport vessels could come next with its thousands of comatose passengers. Earth couldn’t hold any more people and was low on breathable oxygen. The crew of a colony ship will sleep for years and awaken a few months away form the eventual destination to begin preparations for arrival. Timing was everything. Time meant money and lives with every second being worth more than the last.
Jones was currently going mad from boredom and loneliness and knowledge of his fate. His sleeping bath had malfunctioned and now he was going to die. He was mostly through his own food rations already and if he ate the other crewmembers then they would all starve in the last few months off the journey once everyone awoke. So instead he worked. He plotted courses and wrote notes and calibrated terraforming machines. He tried to fix the sleeping bath but it was no use, the thing was shot and no spare parts existed save those on his crewmates baths.
Two months into his awake period he gave up trying to ration food. He wasn’t working anymore. Instead he wrote. He wrote all of his goodbyes and an explanation of what had happened and what command could do in the future to make sure it never happened again.
He wrote out his memories and hopes and things he wished he had done. He felt like he had all the time in the world. In fact, he hadn’t been this bored for a long time, which was why he was going crazy.
Jones mapped the ship in his mind and walked it with his eyes closed just to pass the time. He made delicate zero-gee sculptures by lifting small objects into space and then he took digital images of them for his crewmates to see when they awoke.
When they awoke, he realized, he would be long dead. It was the third month and he was almost out of his food when he simply stopped. He sat and stared into the blackness of space out a window and wondered what they would say, what they would do, when they found his body. He hadn’t been so still for so long before in his life to his knowledge. Eventually he got out his personal computer and wrote one more thing before swallowing a handful of pills and strapping himself into the command chair to stair out the window into space.
Dear Earth and Whom It May Concern-
I think if we all took some time away from the Net and the Vehicles and the Noise we could all learn a thing or two about what it means to be alive.
Looking out the window he decided the stars, the same stars he saw every day and every night for hours on end, weren’t so boring as he had thought. In fact, they didn’t seem very far away either. All it took was time, and he had all the time in the world.
