by submission | Feb 6, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“What do you know? You’re older than Google.”
A pretty spicy thing for a second grader to say on the third day of school, but Katella had a point. I was born in 1993, five years before the nascent don’t-be-evil search engine forced us to learn the word “algorithm.” And though most of us have a preschooler’s understanding of the term, we still seem content to trust the search results Google serves up to us. Which is comparable to asking your drug dealer, “Are there any nasty side effects?”
An unhealthy proposition for sure, and I wanted to explain these things to Katella, but even though she has the dismissive air of a middle schooler, she’s only eight. And all her classmates seated on the carpet at my feet are looking between the two of us with varying expressions of concern, amusement, and sleepiness.
I’m the adult in the room. I’m supposed to be the caring, open-minded, accepting teacher, but I could feel my classroom control toppling. And Katella was pushing hard against it.
“ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, Claude, Khanmigo, Pi, Poe. They know everything. Why listen to you?” she challenged.
Like a ratty jacket left on a muddy playground, I lost my patience. I went old school on Katella, totally pre-Google, pre-Microsoft, pre-IBM, pre-abacus. I sternly rose out of my big, comfy reading chair and ever-so-slowly sat down with the kids on the carpet that sported all 50 states in kaleidoscope colors. Right on beyond-burnt-orange Texas. Oh, it was on. Wild, wild west on.
“Okay, Katella. Why listen to me? Let’s hear what you have to say about how we should learn in school. Please take my seat.”
I thought putting Katella on the spot would stymie her. I thought she’d realize she’d poked the wrong mama bear. I thought she’d be humbled. But I was older than Google, and I did not anticipate the algorithms this eight-year-old was operating by.
She sprang up, retrieved her backpack from her cubby, and climbed into my reading chair. Her classmates were squirming excitedly, but staying oddly attentive. A few surreptitiously eyed me with what might have been concern. Or pity.
Katella unzipped her backpack and pulled out–
“Owly!” her bestie Leander squealed. The other students erupted in delight, “Owly! Owly! Owly!”
Brandishing a fuzzy brown and gold plush owl with enormous digital eyes that blinked and moved as if taking in the classroom, Katella smiled proudly. “That’s right! This is my owl. She’s very special, and smart, and she helps me learn.”
It was beyond obvious that my class was very curious, as was I, so I threw Katella a softball question: “Does your toy owl have a name?”
Katella huffed. “She’s not a toy, Ms. Flint. She’s a teaching tool. Her name is Ai-thena, as in AI for artificial intelligence. But I call her Owly. My mom made her.”
At this point, my teacher spidey senses began not only tingling, they started jangling every nerve in my body. But, I managed to keep my voice calm, “That’s impressive, Katella, How did your mom make her?”
“She’s an AI engineer. She made Owly to help me learn.” Then, in the solidarity gesture known to all first-time messiahs, she swept her free arm towards her rapt classmates. “To help us all learn.”
“But that’s my job,” I sweetly reminded.
Ignoring me, Katella spoke to Ai-thena, “Owly, what’s the best way to teach reading to second graders?”
As if in a burst of inspiration, the owl’s eyes flashed rapidly, and in a soft, no-nonsense voice, Ai-thena explained, “Current research and best practice demonstrate that a comprehensive literacy approach balancing phonological awareness and whole language development will lead to the most successful reading outcomes. I have a very fun and engaging lesson ready. Shall we begin?”
“But that’s my job,” I shamefully pleaded.
Their backs now fully turned on me, my second graders focused their brightly burning eyes on Ai-thena, and their final-frontier future, as Katella triumphantly hooted, “Let’s see what Owly has to say about that.”
by submission | Feb 4, 2024 | Story |
Author: Christine H. Chen
When the sun sets, we trudge out of our homes and queue in line like soldiers under a darkening sky. We tie a scarf over our eyes and wait for our Chief to lead the way. We grasp onto each other’s right shoulder, and off we amble as quietly as our thinning soles could tread on grass, the occasional shrill of an owl piercing the silence. We smell the night, the fear in our brows, we hear our hearts’ throbbing each time one of us steps on a twig, cracking like glass breaking. Only a Chief knows the location in case an Enforcer catches one of us. We lay our trust in each other and grope our way into the bunker.
Once locked inside, our blindfold removed, we rub our blurry eyes and gasp at the hidden treasure no matter how many times we’ve been here already.
The library.
Rows and rows of forbidden tales, forgotten chronicles, obliterated histories. We break out in clusters, rush through the alleys, throw ourselves at the shelves like famished wolves, and embrace our exiled authors, cursed poets, and tortured artists, we devour their words, drink each phrase like gulping down a good aged wine, we caress the covers, trace our fingers on the spine like a lost lover, we bury our nose inside the pages, inhaling their disappearing scent, we dance to the rhythms of verbs and nouns, we thirst and hunger until the clanking of ventilators dwindled.
We climb back out to twilight, imbued with poetic quotes, our hearts thumping with lines and rhymes, to a world of banished words and hushed voices and disappearing truths, grasping at the last shreds of freedom.
by submission | Feb 3, 2024 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Matthew 7:7-8:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”
An old hospitalized patient held the hand of a middle-aged man sitting next to him.
I’m short on time. Even my wealth from Moon mining helium-3 couldn’t give me another day on this blue rock. I’ve got stage four from cosmic radiation. Always a price. I’ve stayed silent about Project ASF-32-3 in Alaska. If the elites want to take away my birthday after this, go ahead. I won’t need it anymore. You’re my only kid. You deserve to know the truth that isn’t for public knowledge and never will be until the guilty die.
What was that project? How was I involved? I was headhunted because of my work in high-energy radio transmission. My first two years working in Alaska at a secret test facility were amazing. That classified research included applications for fleet transports used in our secret space program. We needed methodologies for micro-meteor detection and for punching through the atmospheres of gas giants. Some of our breakthroughs identified hypersonic weapons from enemies. It was a heady time for scientists hungry to break through taboo regions of fringe science that only intelligence agencies funded. That’s why ASF-32-3 existed.
The military knew UFOs used warping tech to leave our space/time. Radar detected circular pulsating waves as craft left black floating rings during transitions. Captured ring residue proved that high-intensity microwaves were involved in opening portals. Naval Intelligence sequestered budgets to reproduce the effect and master it. Some thought it dangerous. It could attract attention we didn’t want from something on the other side. Our project scientists found that scenario childish. In 1988, my portal project was funded.
In the 1970s, a naval experimental station near the Poker Flats Research Range at Fairbanks accidentally produced unanticipated collateral damage during initial tests long before my project. This included the sudden unexplained disappearances of civilian planes. Impacts from initial portal experiments helped build the legend of the Alaska Triangle. We should have learned then that portal trials were high risk.
I won’t divulge the exact details of how we produced a doorway. Briefly, it involves transmitting a continuous, steady piggyback high-frequency beam within a wider, spinning array of pulsating lower energy beams. That’s a simplified generalization. We discovered if beams were sent into the Earth, not the sky, they would eject somewhere else on Earth, creating a swirling pinwheel in the heavens, sometimes even visible in daylight. Those were proto-portals. These occurred several times to the public. Intel guys covered this by claiming the swirling lights were rocket boosters burning up from satellite launches. The media and public swallowed it.
On December 14, 1989, my team activated the most powerful high-powered energy beam event to create an opening, long before HAARP was operational. A pathway opened immediately directly on the surface in front of our facility. Everything for six miles in front of us was melted. All of our project equipment was destroyed by fire. The earth shook violently. The Redoubt Volcano erupted nearby. We were helpless to prevent invisible entities from emerging before that spinning vortex slammed shut. The invaders left dinosaur-sized prints in the snow leading toward the wilderness.
And those entities? They still roam unfettered in the Alaska Triangle, pulling airplanes, ships, and innocent humans to their doom by the thousands. They are unstoppable.
I apologize. You didn’t know. Now you do.
by submission | Feb 2, 2024 | Story |
Author: Matias F Travieso-Diaz
It was early June in Southern California. The graduating class of the Loma Linda High School began to party the moment the term ended.
Ricky sat on the hood of his old convertible. A girl emerged from the partying crowd: she had a nice body, with breasts that bounced as she approached. Ricky slid over and the girl sat beside him.
“I’m Idalia,” she greeted.
“Ricky” he responded. “Are you a student? I don’t remember seeing you.”
“I’m only visiting. In fact, I came looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Let’s not talk here; maybe go for a ride?” she said.
“Where?”
“How about the Box Springs Park? It should be empty on a Tuesday afternoon.”
They parked and Idalia led him on a trail that ended at a ledge from which there was a breathtaking view of the surrounding valleys.
They sat down next to each other, under a fir. They kissed, and their bodies joined in the action. Ricky then stopped and muttered: “I’d like for us to go all the way, but I brought no protection …”
“Don’t worry” replied Idalia. “I can’t get pregnant.”
“Really?”
“I’m not human. I’m from the planet you call Venus.”
“Come on, stop kidding. Where are you from?”
Idalia pointed to the heavens. The blazing sun was starting to dip towards the horizon. “If you could stare at the sun, you’d see a black speck going across its surface. That’s my homeland, and what we are seeing is called a Transit of Venus.”
“So what?”
“We are scouts coming to Earth every Transit. Our planet’s mass shields us from the sun’s radiation and allows us to travel between Earth and Venus for about seven hours.”
“Why are you here?”
“We come to ensure you aren’t endangering the rest of the planetary system.”
“And what did you find?”
“There is no risk to other planets, but life on Earth may end soon from exhaustion of natural resources, toxic pollution, and warming and poisoning of the atmosphere. Unbearable scarcities of everything will develop and men will make war on each other until their extinction.”
The dire predictions fazed Ricky. “How long would we have left?”
“A few Transits.”
“How long is that?”
“Roughly, a couple hundred years.” Idalia’s voice turned wistful. “It would be a pity, for some Earth people, like you, have good traits.”
“We’ve never met. How do you know I have good traits?”
“I coupled with your brother Carlos in 2004, during the last Transit. He said that I should look you up. The way you acted today shows that you are a good guy.”
Ricky had a fleeting mental image of his older brother, lost in Afghanistan. He changed the subject: “How will you return to Venus?”
“I never left. We have perfected the use of quantum superposition, a process by which an object can be in more than one physical location at the same time. So, right now, I’m both here with you and there, in Venus. When the Transit is over, I can no longer stay here.”
“Will you be back?”
“At the next transit, in 2117.”
“I’ll be long gone,” observed Ricky.
“So, we must enjoy the time we have today.”
***
Much later, as the sun set, he asked her: “Is this the end, then?”
“For you and I, yes. But you will likely have descendants. I’ll seek out one of them, assuming Earth survives.”
“Wait, there may be several boys from which to choose. What then?”
Idalia pursed her lips in an amused smile. “I’ll think of something.” And she kissed him one final time.
by submission | Feb 1, 2024 | Story |
Author: Jessica Pickard
Up, Up Brave Beauties!
War is a transformer. Ploughs were hammered into swords; farm horses pulled cannons and we flying girls, we found our wings.
Everyone knows the song:
Into the air brave beauties
Oh flying girls!
Up!
Up. And carry our hearts.
But before the war we were not brave beauties. We were oddities. On worship days Pere Peter sent my family to the side aisle. We knew why. Even my mother was ashamed, angry with what Namir had delivered at the birthing place.
So it was always:
‘Daughter! Keep them folded!’
Father tried harder. I’d hear his voice through the floorboards:
‘Not ODD Hilda. Only UNIQUE. Can’t we just agree on that?’
Father – may he walk with Namir – was not however right. There were others like me, although back then I knew only one. Esther lived over Earnshaw way but we were not encouraged to meet. I have a photo though. We are 12. Esther, taller than me, is looking at the lens from under her hair, wings bundled into an oversize jumper.
Then, in 2612, two things happened. First I turned 17 and, of course, the trolls arrived. We saw their cooking fires glinting across the river and heard their gargled songs. We knew what it meant. A regular fol-de-roll of rape and burning.
Pere Peter read:
‘For our great city boys and men 12 to 40 years are called. Also girls proficient in flying 15 to 25.’
Faces turned to our side aisle. Father gasped. Mother sat up taller.
I still have the badge, wings the colour of honey on a green circle, given to me by First Minister. Now it seemed we were not oddities but ‘key to the defence of the realm’. First Minister stayed all day clapping and hurrahing as we jumped from the airships, night glasses strapped uncomfortably to our chests, to land in practised formations.
The reality was different. For one we always flew alone. And at night – nights so cold you felt your wings might crack. Esther died in the first months, pinioned in the sky by crossed searchlights. I stared down on hairy backs bent over her broken body.
I remember gathering, shivering in first light, to count how many more would flutter in. Then the barked debriefings: Numbers? Crossbows? How close to the bridge?
But I remember too, when we were finally released for breakfast, the banter with the men of the Flying Corps. ‘Flying Corps’! How we teased them! Not one could fly without a machine. And how cheeky they were!
‘A bit of fairy cake tonight darling? ‘
‘Fancy a ride on my cockpit?’
Well we won the war, although what does it mean, to win a war? Win a race – you get a cup, win a bet – money. But win a war? At best you get the absence of war.
But we girls did win something. After the war we walked our city proudly, heads high and wings unfurled.
We, the carriers of hearts.
