by submission | May 5, 2009 | Story
Author : Rob Burton
I watch Kamille comb her beautiful dark hair, and I can’t help but wonder what horror now grows inside her. She’s from a fine family, well respected travelling merchants, with enough money to have selected the best from amongst many possible children, with some low-level inconspicuous enhancements thrown in for good measure. Her eyes are a shade of blue found deep within a glacier. But, honestly, it is her normality that charms me most.
The merchants sometimes encounter distrust, most often ill-deserved. Travellers survive only by maintaining a reputation for honest dealing; it is the business that necessitates constant travel, not any need for anonymity. Low-energy transportation, dirigible air ‘barges’ (a history lesson few realise), are slow – merchant families must travel together. This is less true of those of us who follow.
Perhaps, then, it’s the presence of freaks like me that fosters distrust. Freaks were rarities once; sometimes simple aberrations, sometimes the result of inbreeding. The situation could not now be more antithetical. Births are never accidental, but part of a carefully planned contract, contraception ubiquitous, sex a recreational activity utterly unrelated to child-rearing. Now it happens only because one of the parents has reached the borders of speciation.
Even the poorest usually carry some form of gene modification – perfect eyesight and an enhanced immune system, if nothing else. But the very rich are something else entirely – a people apart, decadent and wasteful of their potential. If they fall upon hard times, the very code that lives inside them becomes their last source of wealth. Those amongst the lower orders who aspire to greater things will give everything they own to forge a parental contract with these glorious beings, and, thereby, a child. Without the careful attentions of the best doctors, however, such children sometimes arrive in unexpected forms.
It’s often uncomfortable for those of us whom appear so obviously different. People cannot help but stare. Hair where it should not be. Fingers fused, diminished or multiplied. Unusual height or build. The variety is endless, the result always the same.
It’s not unusual for us to attach ourselves to these travelling groups. We fit in well with others who feel they don’t fit in. Nothing so distasteful as a freakshow, you understand. I do not sit whist gasping onlookers stare at my patterned fur or my fierce yellow eyes. They come to see the musicians and players, similarly attracted to the nomadic life. Perhaps we add a little intrigue – a glimpsed strangeness amongst the milling troop. I clean the solar collectors atop the canopy, a dangerous task, and tend to electronic systems and engines. Nobody asks how I acquired the skills.
Most of the other ‘eccentrics’ (the polite term, I’m told) don’t even have the education to understand exactly what they are. Not me, though. Because I am a fake, no freak at all. I hide my grace with false mistakes. I pretend to see less well than I do. I keep my silence though I hear everything. I was designed, many years ago, carefully crafted. My family own a quarter of the western continent. I am quite old. I have many children other than the uncertain thing growing in the belly of my love. Her father, recently informed of my status, thinks that the child will be wondrous. I fear he may be right.
I could survive a famine. I have written symphonies. I can run for three days without rest. I was once considered a great beauty.
I just went out of fashion.
by submission | May 3, 2009 | Story
Author : Ken McGrath
Her name was Julia 13.
There had been twelve others before her, all exactly the same. The only thing that was meant to be unique about her, about them, was the number after the name.
But she started to act differently.
Unlike the others Julia 13 began to get curious. It had never happened before. The others had just accepted what they’d been told. Julia 13 had begun by asking questions. The sort of questions that made those around her uncomfortable and silent, the ones nobody wanted to answer or was even sure how to answer.
First there were the queries about her name, about the number which followed it. She then tried to find out about her forerunners, about the original Julia, if in fact there was one, or if she, Julia 13, was just a composite of many women. She was trying to find out about a past she’d never had, that those in charge believed didn’t belong to her.
Someone, one of the technicians on the lower rungs of the ladder that made up the Facility probably, let slip to her about the vat where the previous Julia’s, where she, had been bred. She learned where she’d been born, in a lab, in an artificial womb, deep below the Facility Building.
It had confirmed some of her fears, but she wanted to know more. She needed to find out about her ancestors, if indeed they could be called that, the other Julia’s and what had happened to them.
Her persistent questions had brought her the unwanted attention of the Facility Director though.
He’d let it run on for a while. He was curious too. He was always interested to see how his girls would develop and up until this one they’d all been a success. They’d all conformed. But Julia 13 was different to the others. She was much more inquisitive. In the end he decided that thirteen was probably just unlucky for some, especially since none of the others had shown this trait. In the end he had her removed.
Julia 13 did have a legacy though. After her they stopped giving the girls numbers, after her they were just Julia. Plain and simple, a name with no number, nothing to distinguish one from the one before or the one that came after.
There were certain elements of the past after all which the Facility didn’t want to keep on repeating.
by submission | May 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
One doesn’t earn the title of the system’s greatest escape artist without effort. I’ve broken out of all of them, and in record time. Well, except for that one time they placed me in an archaic brick and mortar cell. I think the first hour I simply stared at the walls in disbelief and spent the next laughing so hard I couldn’t even pick myself up from the floor. But this time they’re really outdone themselves.
You see, in my day and age, scientists have tried almost everything. And one of the things they’ve tested exhaustively is time-travel. I can understand the fascination; after all, who wouldn’t want to be able to travel back and, perhaps, find out just who it was who stole the Mona Lisa? No, it wasn’t me. That was well before my time, but I admire their style.
Alas, much to their frustration they found out very quickly that it is impossible to move back in time. Let me explain. Take a book, anyone you like, though one printed on paper. Jules Verne is one of my particular favourites, though for the purpose of this demonstration, it makes no odds who the author is. Now, if you were to take a page from another book, you’ll find it is not possible to simply place the page within the book to yield a new version of the book. The page does not of its own will assimilate itself with the existing book, and will not without some significant external influence.
Just so regarding time travel. All their studies found that though they could look, they could never touch. But an idea, a thought has no mass at all. It leaves no imprint on the world, even if the subject interrupted by their testing brings “their” new idea into practice; providing of course that if doesn’t radically alter history. And so they found a way to transfer an entire consciousness into a past being. A one way trip of course, specially reserved for extremely dedicated historians. And people like me.
I’ve spent hours starting at these fingertips, all etched with curls and whorls and completely organic. When I touch something now, the only information I receive is that from this body’s own sensory system. To be fair, they did show a little mercy in that they left me in a period that has ready access to alcohol and recreational drugs. I suppose they hoped that I’d just drink myself into oblivion.
Unfortunately, being the kind souls they are, they handed me their undoing in their mercy. Far enough forward in time so some basic technologies would be available, though severely limiting my ability to tamper yes, but also far enough that this culture has already mastered the science of genetic manipulation. And being the technological expert that I am, it was a simple matter to hack their systems and set up a preservation order for my family line. It’s the latest craze of this age. They removed most of my hardwire modifications, but not the ones I’d had coded down to cell level. And so I’ve planned a nice little surprise for my would-be captors.
Cryogenics is still beyond this time, and will be for some time if my recollection is correct. And that’s a shame; I would have loved to have seen the looks on the faces of my judge and jury for myself when they see mine over and over and over…
by submission | Apr 30, 2009 | Story
Author : Richard Watt
Here it came again. A microsecond burst, inaudible to human ears, and – until relatively recently – to human-designed technology, the sudden squirt of dense information still alarmed those who were exposed to it; even slowed down so that it lasted just over a second it sounded like nothing on Earth.
The first transmission which had been intercepted had made headlines; people all over the world had celebrated what was being described as the first clear indication of intelligent life out there somewhere, but nearly a year on, it was old news.
Mainly it was old news because no sense had been made of the transmissions at all. The finest minds of several generations had been applied to them; colossal research grants and vast amounts of government funding had been poured into decoding them, and absolutely nothing of any use had been discovered.
The intervals between the transmissions were random; the sounds themselves were dense, complex and unrepeating, but no-one had been able to relate them to anything – well over a million personal computers were hooked up to a collaborative project to compare the various elements of the signal to the digits of pi or a broad selection of other universal and interesting numbers, but nothing. The signal had been dissected, sliced and spliced; subjected to analysis at all frequencies and even merged with itself, layered over and over until it resembled white noise – but a type of white noise unsettlingly unlike what was familiar to human ears.
Nothing. Nothing usable in any way. The transmissions were of uniform length, but the duration seemed to give no clue – it related to no known wavelength or frequency. The complex waveforms of the signal delivered no meaning, and even the painstaking work which had been done in unpicking the signal – stripping out individual sounds – gave no indication of how they had been produced, or why.
The only practical application of the signals, aside from the endless philosophising which the human race had suddenly become prone to, was a piece of dance music which some enterprising producer had put together. Using the signals as source material, and using the random intervals between them as an erratic and awkward rhythm, the resulting piece of music had been a brief sensation – thousands of listeners all over the world had claimed to divine some kind of message from it, but none of them could agree in any way just what that message was, and the excitement surrounding it died as quickly as it had flared.
The most puzzling thing of all, of course, was that the signals appeared to come from somewhere close. Close enough, in fact, to be within the moon’s orbit. Any number of outlandish explanations for this had been offered, but even a hastily put together collaborative space flight could shed no light on it. The signal came from nowhere, and as far as anyone could tell, meant nothing. Funding was slowly redirected to other projects, and the attention of the world moved on.
In a place which human understanding of the time was incapable of describing, a lifeform which was closer to an idea than a corporeal form took the decision to stop the transmissions. Had it been capable of speaking in English – which it most certainly was not – it might have said something like:
“Pity. They appeared more intelligent than they were. We’ll try again in another 43 lifecycles or so.”
by submission | Apr 29, 2009 | Story
Author : Ryan Somma
Director Almod peered at the computer screen frowning in contemplation, “I don’t get it.”
“It’s a star,” Jaed offered helpfully.
“I know it’s a star,” Almod gaze never broke from the image. “So what?”
“Sooo…” the smile gracing Jaed’s face only moments before had vanished, “So it was made from scratch.”
Almod looked at her, quirking an eyebrow, “On a computer.”
“Yes. On a computer,” Jaed’s hands began playing with one another in that way they were prone to do when she was anxious. This was not going the way she had planned, “I gave the computer eight decillion virtual hydrogen atoms, described in exquisite detail, and defined an environment with physical laws just like our own Universe, and…” Jaed’s mouth scrunched up at the look on Almod’s face.
“And it made a star,” the Director’s frown deepened.
“I–I don’t like to think of it as making a star, so much as the computer inferred a star,” Jaed swallowed.
“What are the applications of this?”
“It’s a proof of concept for the Cartesian method,” Jaed stumbled over the words trying to get them out. “In the 17th century, the philosopher Descartes argued that everything about reality could be known through logical inference. In the 18th century, John Locke argued that reality could best be understood through experimentation, and this has been the dominant paradigm for centuries, the scientific method. The only place Descartes’ idea has had any relevance is mathematics.”
Director Almod’s eyes were starting to glaze over, and Jaed’s hands continued wringing one another, “So you see, this program, this simulation, is a proof of concept. I’ve given the computer a cloud of the most basic atom to work with, and, using gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, it has inferred fusion, producing helium. It has even inferred several gas giants in orbit around the star. So you see…?”
“Hmph,” Almod grunted and Jaed’s heart sank. “We live in a Universe a few billion years old–”
“13.5 billion years old…”
“–Running that on a computer, even accelerated, you might have something useful to the company in… What? A few million years?” the Director shook his head, “I’m sorry, but we can’t dedicate more computing power to something with such mediocre chances of profitability. We don’t do science experiments here.”
Almod left the room without another word, leaving Jaed to swivel back to her disparaged accomplishment. Helium now made up 0.27 percent of the atoms in the simulation, Oxygen and Carbon made up 0.006 percent and 0.003 percent respectively. Neon and Iron were there too, and when the star eventually went supernova, Jaed was certain it would produce all the other elements found in the Universe.
But that event was decades away (not “millions of years” as Almod had grossly exaggerated), and would only occur if the server was allowed to run that long. In the meantime, Jaed could at least watch her simulated Universe of a single star for her personal enjoyment, maybe get a Discover magazine article out of it.
She zoomed in on a tiny speck of clumped matter, a planet made of carbon was orbiting the star. It had an atmosphere as thick as the layer of varnish on a globe. H2O molecules were pooling on its surface, forming lakes and oceans.
There was also a strange discoloration spreading across the planet that puzzled Jaed. There were no chemical reactions with the few elements present in the simulation that she could think of to produce the color green.
