by submission | Sep 4, 2007 | Story
Author : JT Heyman
“Name?â€
“Archimedes Goldblatt Jastrembski Akune,†the applicant replied.
The immigration official looked at the application on his holoscreen and nodded. He studied the screen.
Akune studied the office. Behind the official’s chair, a hologram of the great seal of the Colony of New Canada floated without a ripple. Akune’s eyes narrowed. That was top grade technology … and expensive. He glanced at the wall which held a continuous, live interstellar feed … also expensive … from New Canada’s capital, New Ottawa. There was one cobblestone street. The other roads were just dirt. One building was modern and clean … the governor’s mansion. From what he could see of the other buildings, they were little better than the pioneer cabins from three centuries in the past.
“You have three advanced degrees?†the official asked.
“Yes,†Akune replied. “I’m a certified medical doctor and I have doctorates in civil engineering and agriculture. I wrote the new textbook on colony development.â€
“Hmm,†the official said impassively. “Capacity for children?â€
“My sperm count and motility numbers are on the fourth screen.â€
The official touched the screen. “Hmm. Impressive.†He touched the screen once more. “And you’re wealthy. Self-made trillionaire. No chance of becoming a ward of the colony.â€
Akune said nothing. The official was too calm. Something was wrong.
The official fell silent as one of the emigration shuttles lifted off, making the embassy building rumble.
When the noise had decreased and they could speak normally, the official said, “Ah, the joys of Embassy City. Sometimes, I think Earth put all the colonial embassies next to the main emigration spaceport just to hinder the attempts of qualified candidates to leave its sterile megalopoli for the adventure of the stars.†He closed the application on his screen and stood. “We had you thoroughly vetted before you walked through that door, doctor. What made you think you were qualified to emigrate to New Canada?â€
Confused, Akune said, “My skills. I’ve studied New Canada extensively. I can help make New Canada a thriving colony. I could help improve its medical care, its city planning, even its use of native food plants. I want to help the people of New Canada.â€
“And spread your genes?â€
“Well, yes, of course. The one-child limit on Earth is unacceptable to me. I’ve always wanted a big family.â€
“I thought so,†the official said grimly. “Disqualified. Request for immigration denied.â€
“What? Why?â€
“As I said, we vetted you thoroughly before you walked through that door. Very thoroughly. Your great-grandmother died of cancer.â€
“Yes? Oh. But it was a rare, non-genetic cancer. It’s not something my children would inherit.â€
“Sorry. We can’t risk our gene pool with your obviously defective genes.â€
“But ….â€
With a pitying look, the official added, “If you want to go to a colony so badly, try next door at the Embassy of New Wales. I hear they’ll take anyone.â€
Dejected, Akune left.
As the door closed, the official sighed. “Just once, I’d like to see a qualified applicant.â€
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by submission | Sep 1, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
Labor Supervisor SCE-1124 knew there would be extra costs and difficulties keeping the project plans on schedule without the human contingent. Though the Earth mammals were fragile and easily damaged, they had, indeed, proven to be good workers both on the asteroids and aboard his construction ships.
He noticed a small figure standing by his office-pit and recognized it as the Human Trustee. Why was she still here? He beckoned with his main claw.
Karina Hively approached, face downward as xenoprotocol required.
“I thought you would be gone by now, Former Trustee Hively. What do you want?” He clasped his main claw to indicate impatience.
“Please, Labor Supervisor, I need help. I can’t get transportation.”
“How can that be?” SCE-1124 asked. “I’ve seen thousands of human slaves boarding the repat vessels. They seem quite ready to depart as quickly as possible. Why don’t you join them and be on your way to wherever you and your people want to go?”
She began to wring her hands, eyes wide with what SCE-1124 recognized as anxiety and fear.
“My life is in danger. I’ve been hiding ever since the Emancipation. They won’t allow me on any of the ships.”
SCE-1124 would have none of it. “Oh please. Such disagreements can surely be resolved by offering your fellow humans sizeable monetary incentives. I know for a fact that you sometimes actually received precious metals and gems in reward for your skilled management.”
“Great One, you don’t understand,” she pleaded. “They won’t take my money. I tried, but it’s no use. They want to kill me!”
Tapping his main and secondary claws, SCE-1124 considered. “Why don’t you perform that custom that makes all things good again. What do humans call it? Yes, an apology. Apologize, then you can go with them.”
Hively began to sob. “They’ll never forgive me. They remember when I ordered the cull in the nurseries, the rations-and-oxygen adjustments.”
“Ah yes, yes! You were the one who reduced our project costs for both slave nourishment and atmospheric recharges,” SCE-1124 recalled. He trembled with glee. “I must admit that I didn’t believe humans could live on such little food and oxygen. And only three out of ten died, if I recall correctly, those weak ones we didn’t need. Now that was a very effective business decision, one of your best!”
She covered her face with her hands and fell to her knees. “Please, Great One. I’ve always been loyal …”
SCE-1124 waved his main claw. “Now, now, Former Trustee, the Emancipation Treaty did terminate our business relationship. You and all humans are free to find new work on Earth, or Alpha Centauri, wherever. The transport’s been paid for. It’s out of my claws’ reach, you know. So, I wish you the very best of success in your future career endeavors, and thanks so much for your exemplary professionalism. It’s been a pleasure!
“Oh, and don’t forget that any human detected onsite after today will have to be disintegrated. Now shoo away. Shoo.”
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by submission | Aug 30, 2007 | Story
Author : Viktor Kuprin
October 30, 1961 – Five aircraft rose into the arctic sky from the Olyena airbase, headed northeast over the Barents Sea, towards the frozen wastes of Novaya Zemlya Island. The largest plane, a roaring turboprop Bear bomber, carried Vanya. The most beautiful, a silvery Tupolev-16 loaded with cameras and recording devices, followed the Bear. Americans called the Tu-16 “Badger”. Its Russian aircrew knew it simply as “Tupol.”
Inside the Tupol’s teardrop-shaped observation domes, Instrument Operators Pakulin and Kuchevsky tended their equipment and counted the minutes.
“Did you notice Pilot-Commander Strukov?” said Pakulin.
Kuchevsky nodded. “He wasn’t quite his giddy self, was he? An improvement, if you ask me. I think he’s looking forward to meeting Vanya.”
Pakulin stared out towards the blue sky and ice-strewn sea beyond the dome’s plexiglass. “Who isn’t?”
Strukov’s voice came over the intercom. “Attention. Approaching Zone C. Make all instruments ready,” he ordered.
“Da, Comrade Commander,” both men replied. The well-practiced sequence of toggling switches and closing circuits began. Pakulin could feel his heavy SMENA cine-camera hum as its film came up to speed. Kuchevsky prepared to trigger the banks of stop-motion cameras.
The Badger tracked north over the sea, while the Bear carried Vanya inland across the Sukhoi Nos, the “Dry Nose” Peninsula. Inside other aircraft, within bunkers and fortifications, behind walls of stone and rock, thousands waited for Vanya.
“Mark! Everyone, goggles on!” Strukov shouted. Miles away, Vanya fell free from the Bear bomber. The huge plane turned back toward the sea in a dash to safety. From Vanya’s flanks emerged a 54,000-square-foot parachute, to slow the descent enough so that the Bear would not be sacrificed.
Strukov counted down: “Pyat. ChetÃreh. Tree. Dva. Odeen. NOL!”
Thirteen-thousand feet above the icy, stony plain, the largest thermonuclear device in the history of the world exploded. Four-thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima, the triple-layer fission-fusion-fusion reaction created a fireball over four miles in diameter. The flash of white light was visible 1600 miles away.
For Pakulin and Kuchevsky, for all aboard the Badger, it was the light from hell that would not stop. The entire horizon was a blinding wall of white heat.
The shock wave threw Pakulin forward, his oxygen mask smashing against the plexiglass dome. Spitting blood, vision blurred, he heard Kuchevsky screaming and felt the man’s hands slapping.
“Fire! I’m burning! Help me!”
The acintic glare of electricity arced from the floor. Pukulin instinctively kicked at the loose cables, his boots pushing them apart. He yanked a fire-extinguisher off the cabin wall, aiming its white spray at the wires and Kuchevsky’s still-smoking pant legs.
Kuchevsky sobbed, pointing toward the mushroom cloud risen seven times higher than Mount Everest.
“Look! They’ve killed the world!”
And yet, despite the nuclear scars inflicted by Vanya, remembered afterwards as the “Tsar Bomba,” life on Earth carried on.
But as the world healed, the bomb’s powerful X-ray pulse raced across the depths of space. Forty-six years later, in the star system called 26 Draconis, someone took notice.
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by submission | Aug 29, 2007 | Story
Author : Lirael
“What’s your name?”
“Butterfly. Butterfly Phoenix.”
“Well, that’s a stupid name.”
Butterfly heard that a lot. Being only five years old, she took the insults rather well. She never even thought to change her name. She loved it. Her mother told her that her Daddy, a famous airship pilot, had given it to her when she was born, and that he’d renamed his ship just for her. Butterfly often saw her father on the television and in the newspapers, standing proudly next to his ship, the Butterfly.
Captain Phoenix ran one of the most successful trade companies on the planet, and stood at the head of an entire fleet of airships. The money poured into his accounts, and his personal accountants divided up the profits.
Being five, Butterfly wasn’t interested in the money or politics of her father’s company. Those were grown-up things. Instead, Butterfly liked to watch her father’s ships on screen. Seeing the beautiful colours of the decorated sails that they used, the flags, and the bright, shimmering designs painted across their hulls gave her a sense of pride.
The pilots and crews were always immaculate in uniforms of different colours, each individual to their ship. Those ships were her inspiration. Butterfly spoke of nothing else. Her mother, a patient, gentle woman, did her best to interest Butterfly in things more appropriate for her age and gender, but she simply refused. For her last birthday, Captain Phoenix had given her a small model of the Butterfly, and today, she had brought it to school. She’d been thrilled when someone noticed it.
“I want to fly one of my daddy’s ships someday. See, this is the one he flies now. It’s named after me.”
“I know that ship. It’s on my daddy’s plasma all the time. Captain Phoenix is the greatest airship pilot in the world!”
“I know! He gave me this ship for my birthday.”
“He did not!”
“Did too!”
“Let me see it, then!” By now, a crowd had clustered around Butterfly, and the dark-eyed boy who had approached her. Butterfly shook her head, her black hair swinging back and forth over her shoulders.
“No, I’m not allowed to let anyone else touch it.” She turned away to shield her prize, and the boy gave her a push.
“Let me see!”
“No!” Butterfly stepped back, and squared herself. The boy pushed her again, but Butterfly didn’t move. She held her ship in one hand, and balled the other into a fist. “You leave me alone, or else!”
“Shut your mouth, Butterfly! If you won’t let me see your stupid ship, I’ll just take it!” The boy lunged at Butterfly, and reached for her ship. Shocked at his boldness, she stumbled, and he took hold of her model, ripping it from her hands. One of the flags broke off, and clattered to the playground pavement.
“You broke it!”
“Hah, this piece of junk was going to fall apart anyway!” Lifting it over his head, the boy hurled Butterfly’s ship as far away as he could. It smashed into the ground, and shattered. Butterfly felt a lump form in her throat, and her eyes burned with tears. Without thinking, she took that fist she’d made, and launched herself forward, striking a punch across the boy’s face, his nose crunching from the impact.
The playground monitor was upon them in moments.
“Butterfly! You broke poor Darrin’s nose!â€
“Yes, well,†Butterfly paused, giving Darrin a cold stare, “that piece of junk was going to get broken sooner or later.â€
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by submission | Aug 26, 2007 | Story
Author : Simon Petrie
There’d been big changes at Dave’s workplace.
Dave, 43, had been offered retirement, but he’d opted to stay employed in the burgeoning industry that he, as a roboticist, had helped initiate.
The society-wide introduction of working robots (more pedantically ICs, ‘intelligent constructs’) had been the past century’s dream, finally brought to fruition. And yet …
And yet. Midlife crisis, or something more? He didn’t know.
His reverie was interrupted by a tone in his earpiece.
“Completed on that level yet, Dave?” Hal’s clipped, precise tones, perfectly modulated.
“No, still stuck on the third unit. Shouldn’t be too much longer. Don’t think the rest pose any major problems.”
“Don’t forget those units on the next level. They need attention too.”
“I’ll get there, Hal, don’t sweat. Job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.”
Don’t sweat. Hah. That was a good one. All the same, Dave did take perverse pleasure in the point: there remained some tasks beyond any IC’s abilities.
He finished up, reached the foyer. Several lifts awaited. Time was, Dave had ridden these lifts daily, twelve floors, to his office. These days, he only ever went one floor up. The lifts didn’t see much use any more.
They should have seen, ten years back, where automation led. The first domestic-grade ICs were already able to oust FIDE’s reigning chess champion while still not performing adequately on tasks such as the vacuuming of a shagpile rug. Their handling of basic household chores had improved in subsequent models. Nonetheless, it remained apparent the ICs’ real strengths lay elsewhere, in realms of symbolic logic, abstract concepts, and ordered environments: money; justice; administration; science, technology, mathematics; the factory floor; the shopping centre.
Chaos was their weakness. A disordered environment posed an insurmountable challenge to even the new top-of-the-line ICs with millimolar memory capacity and massively parallel quantum architecture. In some circumstances and for some applications — military, police, rescue, mining — there were ways around this, through the use of human-piloted semi-IC proxies for dangerous and difficult tasks. Many chaotic tasks remained, though, for which this was not cost-effective; perhaps the future would change that.
Funny, Dave thought. The very tasks people had always thought tailormade for robotic intervention were the ones at which ICs weren’t any good.
Hal called again, of course, as he did at precise fifteen-minute intervals whenever Dave was behind schedule. “Completed on that level yet, Dave?”
“Ground level? Yeah, sure, just starting on the first floor units.” He entered the first booth, got to work with bleach and disinfectant, and soon had the entire unit sparkling. The next cubicle was worse: it looked like the S-bend was blocked, he’d have to get his hands dirty to clear it.
Not too complicated a task, in reality; you’d think an IC could master it, if it chose.
But it was a paycheck, and wasn’t that still worth it?
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