by submission | Jan 8, 2009 | Story
Author : Asher Wismer
First came the wind. Rushing out of the east, searingly hot, almost hurricane force, the wind taking my breath away and the rough smack of dust and grit peppering my skin.
Next came the shockwave. If the wind was a slap, the shockwave was a solid punch, pounding every inch of my body, the pain powering right through the epidermis to the muscle and bone and beyond. Although I couldn’t feel it directly, I knew that with the shockwave came a deadly blast of active particulate radiation, enough to kill me many times over.
I didn’t have to wait for the radiation to kill me, fast as the massive exposure would have been. On the heels of the shockwave came… something, not another shockwave, but similar in its effect and feeling. Hot, though, where the shockwave had been neutral. Instantly my flesh boiled, my eyes popped in their sockets, my skin flayed away as easily as cobweb. No sight left, but feeling remained long enough to assure me that each part of my body was disintegrating in its turn, roasting and then simply whisking away under the astonishing pressure of that ungodly blast.
Then a sudden, agonizing yank, pulling my mind from its vanishing shell and back into the host body. Worn and mentally gasping from the experience, I greeted the other minds, and then made my report to the Many.
“Assignment: Test Weapon #99,425 on symbiote body with observer.
Method: Human symbiote body shackled to a concrete wall with uninterrupted exposure.
Analysis: Weapon #99,425 comprising mass reaction of heavy metals, specifically atomic numbers 92 and 94, is fully effective against human bodies. Physical destruction is close to 100%. No major flaws detected on direct test.
Recommendation: Implant the relevant equations in their scientists at the earliest opportunity. Assignment complete, awaiting reinsertion into next available symbiote body.”
by submission | Jan 5, 2009 | Story
Author : David Rees-Thomas
Back in 1938 before we had to move again I remember we would often go to my Granddads house for tea.
He lived in a small cottage on the outskirts of our village with his dogs, a blind Jack Russell and a very old Yorkshire terrier with 3 legs. I was ten years old and it was always very exciting for me as my Granddad knew lots and lots of old stories. My favorite was the one about the time before the Martians came when he used to travel on long journeys all around the world.
He died a few years later and we looked after his two dogs until they also died but I never forgot about what he had said about the time before the Martians. He said that there had been huge ships and long busy railways and that people lived together in huge cities full of horses and carriages and offices and shops and banks and zoos and great parks and all sorts of other amazing things. We didn’t have any of that then, not even in 1938 even though the Martians had been gone for lots of years. Our shops were boring, nothing like the one Granddad talked about and we didn’t have zoos anymore.
Even now, twenty years later, our world is sort of the same. They sometimes talk about building a museum of the Martians but I don’t like that idea. What I want to see is a ship like my Granddad talked about or a palace like he once showed me in an old photograph, something special and human. I don’t want to see the Martians, they spoiled everything, took all those things away from us.
My son will turn two in the winter and I want to feel less doubtful about the future. My wife tells me I shouldn’t complain and we should be grateful and I understand, I really do. They do their best for those of us that live and those that survived but I feel sad when I think about my Granddad and everything that’s been lost. It’s been fifty years since the Martians came and went but I wonder if we’ll ever really understand what happened and what we’re going to do from here on in.
I do have a new job now though, working on a small farm just outside of what used to be Woking that our regional government set up. We are responsible for providing the whole of the south east of England with milk and cheese and butter and we have some sheep for wool so we don’t get cold in the winter. There are about fifty of us on the farm and it seems to work quite well. People seem happy, maybe I’m too pessimistic.
We converted the old farmhouse into new milking sheds a few months ago and yesterday I found something while I was looking through the upstairs rooms. It was a small, plastic ship that had been chewed at the end so that its bow was wrinkled and torn. I picked it up and put it in my pocket and gave it to my son when I got home.
He smiled at me and I stroked his hair gently. I knew that one day I would tell him about the Martians and about my Granddad and about the time when we had ships and railways and palaces and cities and great parks and…and, well, everything. I’d tell him everything.
by submission | Jan 2, 2009 | Story
Author : Steven Holland
Jaden Stanitski throttled the space rover to full power. The soft treads of the vehicle crunched over the rough, sun baked surface of Planet Merco II. He avoided the craters and deep crevices of the planet’s surface as best he could. The sack containing small, labeled samples of rock and dirt had been hastily thrown into the rear compartment. The disturbance of his path sent small chunks of brownish-gray rock flying into the air.
Jaden didn’t notice, for dawn was fast approaching. Miles ahead of him, wispy gray smoke rose in a plume. Even after five minutes, the fire still managed to find oxygen aboard his crashed spaceship.
What had gone wrong? The ship was supposed to remain on autopilot, flying along with him on the dark side of Merco II. Perhaps the magnetic field of the planet’s magnetic core had disrupted some electrical component onboard, not that it really mattered at this point.
He was dead. He knew that. Dawn would come and incinerate him to ashes. Despite the circumstances, Jaden laughed at his actions: trying to outrun the spin of nine hour planet on a land rover. He might buy himself a few seconds, maybe even a minute.
Abruptly, he slammed on the brakes. The rover skidded to a stop, its back end fishtailing slightly. The light was coming; Jaden could see it in the horizon behind him now.
The seconds ticked by. Jaden sat frozen on the seat, his mind whirling like an overworked steam engine. Three deaths – incineration, hypothermia, or asphyxiation. The blazing sunlight drew closer, waves of heat rising toward the empty blackness. He had 15 minutes at the most.
Three deaths. Clenching his teeth, Jaden decoupled his air hose. The hissing sound of the air was lost in the vacuum of space. This death would be the most painful, but it was the fate he could control.
by submission | Dec 31, 2008 | Story
Author : Brian C. Baer
Robots love me.
As much as robots can love. And in a plutonic sense, of course. Something about my chubby little baby face sets off their simulated paternal instincts and they all bend over backwards to answer my questions. That sort of thing comes in handy with my job.
I knelt in front of the unmoving blue robot. As if brooding, it sat on the floor in the middle of the living room. It was large and bulky, a few years old but in decent enough shape. Not one of those smooth, humanoid-looking models that have been flooding the market; it was more from the “Rock ’Em, Sock ’Em” school of design. Behind me, the family stood anxious, worried, huddled together.
“Can you fix him, doctor?” the wife asked. The soft expanse of flesh beneath her chin shivered with concern. She hugged her young daughter close. The husband did the same to her.
“I’m not a doctor,” I said absent-mindedly as I eyed my scanner.
“I beg your pardon?” the husband chimed in, brushing a loose strand of hair across his comb-over with his palm.
“Hm?” I asked, coming out of my focus. “Oh. I’m not a doctor. Robots don’t really have brains, so they don’t need a psychiatrist or anything like…” I trailed off, before looking back to my work. “I’m a technician.”
“Henry just sat down and stopped moving,” the little girl said, sounding close to tears.
“We just had him in for maintenance and everything checked out,” the wife added. “I don’t understand it.”
I nodded and made a little “hmm” sound, but I wasn’t really listening. “Unit NX-6401, respond to my voice.”
“Henry,” the robot corrected me in a surprisingly human voice. It still hadn’t moved, and the lights hadn’t returned to its dim photoreceptors.
“Okay, Henry,” I conceded. “Are you functioning correctly?”
It made a soft snorting noise. “If that’s what you call this.”
I sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of it. “Hey, now. What’s that all about?” I put my hand on its shoulder. Henry’s ocular lights activated, but just barely. It didn’t respond right away.
“The Johnsons across the street bought a new robot,” it said finally.
“Yeah,” the husband confirmed from behind me, “One of those new A-01 models.”
“Go on,” I coaxed.
“I’ve seen it walking their kids to school and fixing their roof, and it’s got those extendable arms and a hedge-clipper accessory, and…”
“And its making you feel not as special?” I asked in a soothing voice.
“The A-01s are so great,” it said. “One of them would be so much more functional for this family. It would be better than I am.”
“Henry, I’m going to tell you a secret about humans. It is a bit paradoxical, so promise me your head will not explode when I tell you.”
It nodded, its eyes glowing brighter. I glanced back at the morbidly obese woman and her balding husband. Even their little girl wasn’t too easy on the eyes.
“Henry,” I said. “Humans build emotional attachments. And they don’t always want what’s shiny and new. They want what they love.”
“They love me?” It asked, looking over my shoulder at the piles of unappealing humanity. It stood up, and after a moment, I followed.
“It isn’t very logical, doctor.” Henry’s voice sounded happy.
I smiled. “I’m not a doctor.”
by submission | Dec 30, 2008 | Story
Author : Glenn Blakeslee
Stan and I sat by the campfire in the desert night. The fire was burning low, a bed of embers surrounded by fire-blackened stones. We sipped on our beers, and I waited for Stan to start talking.
He’s one of my oldest friends, a physicist and a brilliant guy. When we camp in the desert he always has a late-night campfire lecture for me. I could tell he was ready to start talking. “Go ahead, Stan,” I said.
He smiled self-consciously. “Well…” he began, “We’ve talked about the Heisenberg Principle, right?”
“That’s where you can’t know the state of a particle until you observe it,” I said.
“Right. And by observation you collapse the wave function. But we can’t always observe, don’t always collapse the wave. There’s a natural process called vacuum fluctuation that causes that to happen without our interference. Otherwise, a particle wouldn’t reveal itself and matter, the universe, wouldn’t exist.”
“Okay.”
Stan scratched a square in the dirt with his shoe. “Imagine that’s a cubic foot. Information theory tells us that, when the wave collapses, there’s a finite amount of physical information encoded in that cubic foot. It’s a huge amount of information, but still finite.” With his foot, Stan pushed lines out from the sides of the square. “Let’s expand this foot to a square light year.” He looked up at me and smiled. “Still a finite amount of information, right?”
“Right,” I said. I’m never sure where his conversations are leading.
“Well, the universe is infinite,” he said, and he threw a small log on the fire. “The visible edge of the universe is estimated to be four hundred thousand light years away, but that’s only the distance light has traveled. It’s still infinite.”
“Okay.”
“A cubic foot or a cubic light year has only a finite number of possible states. Since the universe is infinite, you can map out an infinite number of cubic light years, and information theory says a good number of those cubic light years would have the same finite set of wave functions as our own cubic light year.”
Stan threw another log on the fire. “And a duplicate set of wave functions means a duplicate set of the physical properties of our own cubic light year,” he said.
“You mean…” I started, and stared at him. “There’s like… an alternate universe? One just like our own?”
“Not an alternate universe,” Stan said, “Another part of this universe that’s exactly the same as our own.”
I stared at the fire. Embers glowed red and fire licked at the underside of logs. A piece of wood popped, and a single flame twisted, curled, spat its load of carbon into the night sky. The exact same flame, somewhere else, did the same.
I looked back at Stan. In the light of the fire I could see tears welling in his eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s no good, Stan. Samantha is still dead. You have to give it up.”
Stan looked at me, and he smiled. “A small variation on our finite set could make a situation where I was able to save her.”
And there was nothing, nothing in our finite set, that I could say.
