by submission | Sep 16, 2008 | Story
Author : Josh Zingg
Ariston crunched his way along Access-01 toward what was left of the capitol, keeping his head down and goggles tight over his eyes. The wind surged at him, and he felt its coarse touch wearing away his spirit. Wasn’t much left to wear, these days. He pulled aside his face cloth and sneezed into the air, immediately regretting it as the gale blew his dusty spit back on him. He sighed internally and wiped a gloved hand over the pockmarked chest plate of the old Sanja mk. II he wore under his various wraps.
He looked up and squinted, not because of the light, since of course there wasn’t much anymore, but because his goggles were so abraded he had a hard time seeing. The signal lights of the SC guard stations blinked lazily at him through the haze, and he could see the distant lights of the city and the dull black edifice they had dropped in the middle as a command center. “Reconstruction Nexus” they called it in the leaflets they kept dropping on every village they could spot.
“This cutting edge modular facility will serve as the central hub of the Sol Consortium’s reconstruction efforts. It serves as a home base for the J9 Precipitators hard at work in the upper atmosphere and houses the peacekeepers ensuring your safety throughout the area surrounding Ouranopolis.”
Lyle snorted at the thought, puffing a bit of dust out of his red nose.
Picking up his pace he adjusted the thin cloth covering his mouth and nose in the vain attempt to get a few clean breaths. He heard a rumbling from behind him and hurled himself to the side of the road, tucking his head and rolling down the embankment. Seconds later, a huge APC trundled by, weighed down with “peacekeepers” and entirely heedless of pedestrians. With the wind always howling in your face it took you a while to hear the things coming. Their solid tires churned the gravel of Access-01 and their engines were brutish Clodians, built for strength over grace, but no sound overpowered the ever-driving wind for long.
For a long moment Ariston just lay there in the ditch, his chest laboring in the thinned air. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it was a year ago and he was lying on green grass in Independence Park. The sky above him was a pure blue dotted with fluffy clouds here and there. A cool breeze blew from the northeast, rustling the squat native trees. All of Eleuthera’s lifeforms were rather squat, but they had a certain elegance to them. He could smell the Sunbursts in bloom all around and Eirene was next to him… Eirene.
His eyes snapped open and he looked up, not at a clear blue sky but at a whirling brown smear, streaked with darker bands. He could make out a diffuse glow on the horizon where the bloated red sun was rising. High above him he noticed one of the peculiar eddies in the dust storm that marked the presence of a Precipitator. The massive SC gravships trolled the stratosphere, straining out the dust and particulate matter kicked up by their own mass drivers a little over two standard years ago.
by submission | Sep 14, 2008 | Story
Author : JY Saville
“Iridescent,” she said without looking. “Aren’t they?”
Henry Deaton shook his head, exasperated that his wife still couldn’t remember the colour of his eyes.
“Never mind,” he replied.
He raced up on deck and peered through the reinforced bubble covering the ship as it sailed the methane seas of the oil-rich planet that had made his fortune. As long as Lydia had her silks and jewels she was happy; she had no time for Henry’s eyes.
“Captain!” came a shout, and Henry turned to watch, longing for excitement.
A young boy ran barefoot along the deck. The captain emerged from the cabin opposite Henry and surveyed the dirty youngster with distaste.
“Well?”
“Captain,” panted the boy. “There’s a hole, they’ve made a hole.”
“What are you talking about, boy?”
“The ship, they’ve broken the ship: the giant barnacles.”
The captain looked astonished for a second then laughed, cuffed the boy around the ear and dismissed him.
“Giant barnacles!” he repeated to himself, shaking his head as he ducked back through the doorway.
Henry watched the boy with interest as he slunk back along the deck. On a whim, he followed.
Three floors below deck Henry lost the boy in a crowd of jostling men, but he barely noticed as he realised what all the activity was about. The wall bulged alarmingly, and the six-deep crew were straining to push it back into place, trying to strengthen it with a patch. Whether it was giant barnacles or metal fatigue, something had cracked the outer hull, and the immense pressure was threatening to crush their vessel like a toy boat in a storm. Not knowing what else to do, Henry muscled into the pack and added his weight.
It soon became clear, at least to Henry Deaton, that they were not moving the thick wall, and with all the crew here, other important tasks were being neglected. He looked around for signs of authority, but all Henry could see was the imminent onset of panic reflected in the eyes of his companions. He squirmed out of the mass of bodies and ran for the stairs.
“Captain!”
The captain flung open his door and looked disdainfully at the dishevelled passenger who’d had the audacity to hammer upon it.
“Captain,” Henry continued, “The boy was right, the ship’s been holed.”
“Now don’t you try and tell me it’s giant barnacles,” growled the captain. “If there was anything amiss, don’t you think I’d know? What do you think these are for? Decoration?” He gestured to the gleaming banks of monitors behind him, then slammed the door before Henry could reply.
Rousing the captain again was futile, and there was nothing more he could do below deck, but a sick fascination drew Henry back to the scene of the struggle. He raced back below but froze at the foot of the stairs, eyes wide with terror. Had Lydia been there, she would have seen that they were black, like the bottom of the sea.
by submission | Sep 13, 2008 | Story
Author : William Tracy
I am an airplane.
The wind whistles down my fuselage as I soar in the bright sky, the earth spread beneath me. I pull a barrel roll for the sheer joy of it, weave through an invisible slalom course in the sky.
A voice crackles in my mind. “You aren’t here to have fun, soldier.”
I straighten my course. “Yes, sir.”
“Get your job done and get out.”
“Yes, sir.”
I lose altitude, and skim low over the hilltops. Plumes of dust rise from a column of trucks ahead of me—the enemy convoy.
Right on schedule.
I arm a missile, and target a bridge ahead of the convoy. Ready … the lead vehicle is driving onto the bridge … now.
The weapon skips ahead of me, rocket purring. In a flash of light, the bridge slips into billowing smoke. I swoop overhead to the sharp staccato of automatic gunfire.
I am hit in my left wing. My ailerons twitch involuntarily with the pain. Warm hydraulic fuel seeps down my wing, only to be lapped away by the brisk air.
Now this is personal.
I double back, empty my last three missiles into the remainder of the convoy, and open up with my machine guns as I pass. I turn again, and strafe the wreckage one more time.
The voice in my mind clears its throat. “That’s enough.”
“Yes, sir. Returning to base now.”
I weave artfully back and forth, dodging fire until I am out of range. Then I load the return vector and activate the autopilot. After verifying the diagnostic output, I disengage.
My senses return to my body a thousand miles away. I reach back and release the plug from the base of my skull. I stretch comfortably and sit up, systematically popping my knuckles one finger at a time.
Damn, I love this job.
by submission | Sep 11, 2008 | Story
Author : Chrysta Lea Baker
“Good help is so hard to find these days,” Roberta said as she sat back in the chair and watched as the technician painted on a metallic finish to her toenails. “I mean I’ve really had a terrible time finding a reliable and hardworking servant ever since Rosie expired in April.” The technician blew on her feet to dry the polish and Roberta felt a little tingle shoot up her spine. “It’s not like I’m a tyrant either. I know plenty of others who treat their servants like pets rather than individuals.” The technician just nodded and continued to blow on her feet until the polish dried. “I at least try to treat them with a little kindness and even respect. I mean, I know I don’t have to, but I find that a happy servant is a productive servant and that’s really all I’m expecting. Is that too much to ask?” The technician stood up, helped Roberta out of the spa chair, and led her into the massage room.
“I just don’t understand what the problem is,” Roberta continued as the massage therapist rubbed oil onto her flawless back. “Rosie always did what she was told and never once gave us a minute of trouble in the thirty plus years she served in our home.” The therapist worked the oil around her joints and Roberta could feel her tension being relieved. “Well, I take that back, when Rosie was first assigned to us she went through the usual adjustment period. There were some incidents at the beginning, which were to be expected, but within a few weeks she learned to accept her position and in the end I think she realized that things could have been so much worse for her.” The therapist tapped her on the arm and Roberta rolled over onto her back. “We gave her days off now and again to do whatever she wanted, even though the agency warned us against it, but we have always been believers in positive reinforcement. I suppose I could be wrong, but I truly feel that Rosie came to love us and even enjoyed her years of service.” The therapist nodded as she helped Roberta up from the table and walked her into the salon.
“So now we’re on our third servant in as many months and I just don’t think this one is going to work out either,” Roberta said to the stylist as he worked without listening. “I mean, where does all this rebellion come from anyway? Can you tell me that?” Roberta looked in the mirror and waited for the stylist to respond. After a few moments of silence he realized that she had asked him a direct question and he just stared back at her in the mirror and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I guess it’s just the idealist in me,” Roberta said with a sigh. The stylist went back to work and breathed a sigh of relief as well. “I’ve just always held out that faint hope that robots and humans could peacefully coexist after the war without these problems, but I guess that’s just the dreamer in me.”
The stylist finished the upgrades to Roberta’s hard drive, reattached the metal plate to her skull, and placed the wig back onto her head to hide the mechanics. It still creeped him out how robots wanted to wear human hair wigs, but he supposed he could understand why. “If only humans could live forever as we do,” Roberta said as she got up to leave, “it would be so much easier for us all.”
by submission | Sep 10, 2008 | Story
Author : Ryan Somma
“You’re angry.”
“I’m not angry, I’m frustrated.”
“If you’re frustrated, that usually means you’re about to learn something.”
“Don’t quote Philo to me. You know I hate it when you quote Philo.”
“I’m just trying to think this through like he would do. This was his project, and now we’re responsible for it.”
“You think you’re so smart, but you’re not.”
“Obviously, I’m still here aren’t I?”
Dodd huffed back into his chair, folding his arms across his chest. I took advantage of his impromptu pout-break to nab Philo’s old Rubik’s Cube off the desk. Dodd moaned his displeasure at this, but knew better than to say anything. I was consistently solving the puzzle in under five minutes now.
It was almost a year since Philo vanished, along with a significant minority of city-dwellers, half of University Campuses, and all of Mensa International. Where did they go? Was it the fabled “Singularity” the old websites talk about? The “Rapture for Nerds?” Who knows, the people who came up with that idea had all disappeared as well.
So here we were, Dawson, I, and the rest of humanity’s dimbulbs left on Earth, playing with the toys the smart kids had left behind, trying to figure them out. Keeping faith in the supposed plasticity of our minds. We were muddling through understanding the brainiacs’ artifacts one by one.
I put the Rubik’s Cube, solved, down on the desk, thinking toward my lunch break, when I would resume tackling chess problems, and I had an epiphany–my new word of the week, and said, “Remember Dawson? She worked on an application just like this at her new job. I remember Philo giving her phone support on it all the time. They even set up an online forum to collaborate… before they–you know–transcended. I bet we can–”
“Dawson?” Dodd cut me off. “You mean Chelsea Dawson? The girl we fired from Help Desk? She went to egghead heaven too?” Dodd’s eyes rolled up into his head, frowning, “Oh, that’s more than I can bare.’
“I know,” I shook my head ruefully, “I’m feeling a little insulted too.”
Dodd was immersed in his self-loathing again, his very existence offending him. I popped a fish-oil pill and resumed squinting at Philo’s impenetrable tomb of programming code. My head hurt, but I didn’t mind. It was all part of what the smarties endured, like working out or dieting for a better body. No pain no gain on the road to a better mind.
Maybe one day I would vanish too.
