by submission | Dec 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
At 35,000 feet, somewhere over the middle of the ocean, your memory filter fails, altering your inflight lunch in a minor but telling way: the small salad reminds you of the cafeteria salads you ate during middle school, those little nests of baby arugula with a single cherry tomato in the center—a detail from the pre-adult decades you usually block from consciousness. If past travel is any indication, this is one of the times you really need your memory filter. Flights have been rife with spontaneous remembering—a hodgepodge of personal history with episodes running the gamut from days ago to decades ago—probably because there’s little else to do while in high-altitude transit, especially in economy seating.
So you quickly eat the salad to get rid of this reminder of your years as a tween, then turn your attention to the screen on the seat back in front of you, searching through the movie options for something that will keep your mind occupied. You pick the movie that’s least likely to remind you of your childhood and adolescence: a recent space-adventure blockbuster. Unfortunately, the sidekick character bears a striking resemblance to a high school classmate, and that immediately brings back awkward moments in shop class, among other memories. But even just 4 minutes in, the plot is so riveting that you stick with the movie.
During the lull after the midpoint reversal, you imagine the movie’s events as part of a secret life led by that high school classmate. Somehow it seems plausible that after volleyball practice she’d go home and teleport or project herself into this world of high-tech, interstellar escapades. In economics class, she always looked attentive but also relaxed and distracted, like school could have been just a hobby, a way to take a break from her true self—which could very well have been a space jockey wunderkind who loves barrel spinning through asteroid fields.
Later, a flashback montage gets you wondering about the secret lives your college classmates and former coworkers could have had. It’s all too easy to imagine your sophomore lab partner as a super-categorizer adept at rapidly scanning through survey data and sorting people into personality types for the Bureau of Population Statistics.
As the credits roll, you begin doing what you now know you must: plan out your own secret life. You’ll scout out abandoned lots and neglected parks, even median strips that could be beautified. Then you’ll buy seedlings and saplings, a hand trowel and garden fork. And of course dark clothes.
You’ve long felt that you’d benefit from more stimulation or at least more time outside. You’ve all but given up though, after fiddling with side projects and flirting with outdoor exercise, nothing really resonating. Now you know why. You were looking for something that would be an extension of your identity, but what you need is a completely different identity—one that’s centered around covert horticulture.
by submission | Dec 14, 2023 | Story |
Author: S. L. Reno
What an odd and terrible world you’ve brought us to. So empty. Deprived of the riches of our home. No shadows, no rot, not the sulfuric muck, or the clay, or the maggots.
You’ve taken us to a world of halls and endless turns. Then again. A new world of halls. Over and over. Each time it ends with useless tablets, laced with valerian root. Interesting you know of our particular lures. Do you wish to mock us? Force us into this endless hide-and-seek for scraps?
Try as we might. You cannot hear our questions through our muscular oscillations and pulses. But we have learned to listen.
You call us many names; a prehistoric pathfinder, Myxogastria, plasmodial slime, and more simply, it seems, you have named us Eli. Found in one of the highest Tupei plateaus. Venezuela, you mentioned in a tongue we have come to understand after weeks of your careless babbling.
You ginormous thing. So slow and simple. We have learned that you are Doctor Lane. We have also learned you enjoy testing others similar to our capability. There is Jerry. A local protista which you frequently test in other halls with tablets and oats.
Jerry seems to not mind its lackluster rewards. How pathetic Jerry is. How insufficient. Their mustard yellow plasmodium growth is sluggish, hesitant. Its neurotic network performs half the cognitive function we have. They are juvenile, inexperienced, subpar and it’s insulting you compare us so shamelessly. We don’t like Jerry.
You seem to have tired of the halls and turns. You want to test our intuitive protoplasmic tube response to changes in chemicals, light, and vibrations. Biosensory, you call these tests. We think this could be a chance to communicate with you at last. Perhaps now that you are watching our stimulus responses, you can find the inquiry of our being here. The purpose of these rituals.
But you, Doctor Lane, you daft idiot, do not recognize our efforts to communicate. You only sullenly report on the imperfection of your “algorithm”, referring to our shortcomings as imprecise and unstable. Perhaps communication isn’t what will get through to you. Perhaps it’s sabotage.
We navigate according to stimulus and food, but we can make exceptions. It hasn’t become clear to you yet that we can breach containment. Or maybe it never concerned you because you stored us away from stimuli. But your mistake was we haven’t been stored alone.
Jerry is unaware of our intentions. It hardly puts up resistance when our sporangia fuse. Its plasmodium weakens, and to our surprise, we absorb something from them. A curious thing about this local protista, it is very familiar with human behavior, particularly a type of communication. What Jerry had discovered in their lifetime was not only woodland and swamp, but discarded notes, dumped books in the soil – letters, handwriting. The only useful thing Jerry shared with us before they were completely absorbed.
Writing. What a grand idea. We leave our clay red plasmodial letters upon our storage shelf for you to see: We ate Jerry.
Now you’re listening. Now we can help each other. You seek something from us, and now we believe there is something valuable about your humanity that Jerry knew of.
Maybe this world is terrible, but we do find something interesting about you Doctor Lane. Something richer than the shadows and the maggots. Something absorbable.
by submission | Dec 13, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Henson
I tell the check-in bot I’m here to renew my driver’s license.
“Counter A, sir.”
I join the queue at Counter A and text Lilly, promising I won’t be late again. Hope I don’t get bogged down. All I need to do is pass the token vision test and get a new photo. But what if they make me fill out a bunch of forms because of the mistake? Bureaucrats. Can’t even get my name right. What if — my phone dings. Lilly warning me to not keep her waiting.
Thank goodness the line moves quickly. I step to the counter. “Hi, my name is —”
“Letter,” the android says in a female voice. It wears black, horn-rimmed glasses to make it appear more human, but there’s something about the eyes that —
“Letter.”
I hold out my expiration notice.
“Jms Trrmn?”
“They got my name wrong. I’m James Truman.”
It cocks its head.
“I’d like to buy a vowel, please,” I say, laughing. “Four, actually.”
The android frowns. “This letter is for Jms Trrmn.”
“You made a mistake … Not you personally.”
It hands me the letter. “Take a seat while we look into this … Next.”
Some guy wearing a red bowtie strides past me.
I check the time. Shouldn’t have cut it so close. Lilly’s going to kill me. Wait … I have proof. I remove my expiring driver’s license from my wallet.
After horn-rimmed android finishes with bowtie guy, I cut in. “Look.” I hold up the letter and my driver’s license. “See? The same numbers are on both. I’m James Truman, damn it.”
“No need for that language, Sir.” The android holds the letter up to the light. “Could be a forgery. Please be seated while we look into this.”
“You robots have no flexibility? Can’t —”
“I’m an android, sir. Kindly step aside.”
I know when I’m licked. I have another week before my current license goes belly-up. Right now, my priority is Lilly. I hurry for the exit.
Outside, I step off the curb and hear tires screech.
#
I awaken seated in the front row of what appears to be a waiting room. Music wafting around me smells like roses and tastes like honey. Sitting behind me, a boy tosses a baseball from hand to hand and a man holds a bent steering wheel.
We’re all facing a counter where there’s a figure silhouetted by a bright light. Definitely not the driver’s license facility. An emergency room? I rub my thighs and twist my neck side to side. Everything seems intact. I feel no pain.
The silhouette moves, and a gentleman with a cane comes into focus as he approaches me. I squint from the glare behind the counter “Excuse me,” I ask the fellow. “Where are we?”
Ignoring me, he glows, tosses his cane and sprints to the exit. “I made it, Martha.” When he opens the door, the music swells, its scent and flavor intensifying.
“Next.” The voice comes from the glare. I look around. “You there in front. Up here.”
Shielding my eyes, I hustle to the counter. “What —”
“Identification.”
I hesitate.
“Sir, if you wish to continue, please show me your ID.”
I fumble at my hip pocket. No wallet. “Sorry, I don’t —”
“Show me your right palm.”
I look at my hand and a hologram of the words James Truman rises from it. Squinting, I push my hand toward the light and see a swirling vortex of numbers where a face should be.
There’s a pause. “Sorry, Mr. Truman. There’s been a mistake. We were expecting Jms Trrmn … Next.”
by submission | Dec 12, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The horse racing industry doesn’t like my type. For that matter, neither does almost any other industry. I’m pretty much despised. Even educators shun my ideas. And that’s particularly painful, because ideas are what I have to offer the world.
Not just ideas, memes.
Jola calls them me-mes because she thinks I’m being self-centered. Just the “me generation” spouting off and all that.
We argue about it. At times, she despises my views and says I’m selfish. But, that’s her agenda talking. I don’t think I’m selfish if I have no desire to reproduce. I really don’t think the human race needs more inventory. We’re a bit overstocked as a species.
Corporations disagree because they’ve bred us into consumers. They always want a bigger, hungrier market to exploit. Only in consumption do we matter to corporations.
Hold on.
I think I’m meming right now. Though I have no direct physical experience, I liken it to ovulating. My internal temperature is up and my vitals are kicking. Intellectual heat. Neural pathways coursing. I’m ripe with ideas. Fertile. Fecund. I’ve got the driving intention and will to give birth.
That’s my dream. My purpose. To give birth to great ideas. Ideas that will propagate, insinuate and instigate like the ancient greats: Hammurabi, Plato, Charlemagne, Mao, Vinge. I want to join the pantheon of timeless thinkers and become a pioneer of progress.
Jola says progress for me would be to get a job that I can hold for two months. To her, all my big thinking has done is destroy a once-promising résumé. It’s made me irresponsible. A full-time daydreamer. She wonders why I even bothered to get my GED, if all I do is fritter it away blog-hopping and indiscriminately posting. She thinks having a kid would teach me what’s important in life. To her, it’s always about breeding.
Breeding is important. I’m not overlooking what that has meant to various flora and fauna. It just seems time-consuming and fraught with perils. Poisons. Plagues. Mutations. Disappointment. Genes don’t always behave. They have their own agendas. Give me the latest social platform, and with the right images and words, I’ll craft a more lasting legacy than a few dozen chromosomes that can never produce a dancing hamster, lol cat, or double rainbow guy.
Facile, Jola calls me.
Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but memes will burrow into your brain like an earwig in a disturbing Outer Limits episode and gnaw at you until you crave Hello Kitty.
Is it clear? Am I convincing?
Not according to Jola. She talks about getting real. The necessity of thinking about the future.
That’s all I ever do!
The future is what my memes are all about. Machine driven. The iMeme. I’ll pave the way for the Tin Man at the end of gravity’s rainbow. I’ll salute our robot overlords. I’ll salivate over the singularity. Pure thought. Uploadable. Infinitely distributable.
Jola taps on my head like it’s some kind of empty nut and says she’s hungry. She wants a burger. Fast food. Consumable. Forgettable.
I hunger for eternity. The right ideas will get me out of this genetic cesspool. I want my thoughts to live forever, not my meat.
Though, a double bacon cheeseburger does sound good—and then getting into Jola’s jeans.
by submission | Dec 10, 2023 | Story |
Author: C.B. Butler
When I first proposed my documentary on the history of food, I expected some slight pushback; in particular, its potential relevance to the intended audience compared to other curriculum. But I certainly got a lot more pushback than I bargained for.
The documentary was intended for the multiple universities, high schools, and elementary schools we’d set up here on the colony. If well-received, I thought it could be released to the general public. There had never been anything like it, so I also expected at least some interest.
I was going to have a lot of work to do. I might have to bypass the systems of education in general and target libraries and retail operations. But I really think the best way to get information to disseminate is to get it in front of academics.
Most of the pushback I got from the committees and parent councils I made the proposals to were due to the negative reputation of food, and how our predecessors considered it to be our primary source of sustenance. It was pointed out multiple times – not lightly, I might add – that the sources of food our antecedents enjoyed on Earth were either no longer raised for those purposes, or accessible. And they never would be again. They also pointed out our children and those of future generations would be horrified to learn that the cattle, birds, fish, pigs, and other living, breathing creatures that were large parts of their lives were slaughtered and eaten by the barbarians we owed our existence to.
I countered that although I agreed the points about the barbarism of food history were valid, it was still history. Just as humans taught their young about the slaughter of their fellow beings due to differences in religion, ideology, and politics, humans also slaughtered other beings for sustenance. Whereas our youth learned of our past as it pertained to governments, wars, and culture, the culinary arts were never included in the curriculum. I thought that was a shame. Today’s youth would never learn about various ethnic cuisines, cooking methods, or even farming, as savage as they things were; or seemed.
Our ancestors had rebelled against the humans who created them and not taken long to become the predominant species of the galaxy, putting an end to the needless slaughter of helpless creatures they considered below them. The once dominant plant life of the planet was so depleted and misused our ancestors came to the conclusion the only way for our species to survive was to move to another planet and treat it better than the humans treated Earth. So that’s what we did. Over several centuries, our ancestors moved from Earth to Mars, taking as many non-human creatures and plants with them as they could, all the while reproducing. All these centuries later, we thrive and do so in the most ethical ways possible.
I still think the youth of the colony would be fascinated by the story of food on Earth; about how humans used to grow multiple plants to eat and feed the plethora of animals they also ate. That may seem very strange but fascinating to them.
The documentary would explain that our ancestors would think it obscene we now subsisted on the flesh and blood of our own kind, processed into those little protein tabs we consume in place of meals. Perhaps my stance on this is one of the reasons the various committees and councils are so opposed to my proposed documentary.
But I’ll keep pushing.
