by submission | Nov 11, 2023 | Story |
Author: James Callan
In the cozy confines of a VR cell, I can become anybody. When the warm water rises to engulf me from head to toe, when a backwards count of thirty seconds reaches zero and my eyes reopen to take in what world it may, I am, in those transitional moments, as if a flesh-and-blood embryo curled within a metallic egg, an unborn being on the verge of new life. In the titanium embrace of a VR cell, futures are divergent and many…
I am a bartender on Calypso, the Saturnian moon fully furbished into a pleasure pit-stop and casino. I mix drinks and have the gift of gab. I receive high-value tips from high profile galactic travelers. I earn my bread by being the best mixologist on the outer side of the asteroid belt. But where I really earn my credits, the six-figure wads fed to my accounts, is from the gossip I overhear, file away, and sell to buyers at a premium. I get politicians drunk, holo-projection stars hammered, cult leaders tipsy, and business moguls befuddled with booze. I smile as they speak into the recording device nestled in the wedge of my collar, nodding with an actor’s understanding, a simulated warmth and counterfeit sympathy as they feed secrets to the gadget that will expose their dirty secrets.
I am a notorious street racer who has never lost a race. I weave through the busy streets of Ares, capital city of Mars, in my hover car which has broken the sound barrier, broken records, and broken the spirits of my opponents as I leave them in clouds of ochre dust. I outrun the law with ease, watching blue and red lights grow small and distant in my rear view mirror. I am a motion trail, a blur, a passing object far ahead.
I am an Egyptian noble, an architect that has seen pyramids rise from the desert. Along the Nile, I walk with Anubis, hand in hand. As god of the underworld, he promises to love me even after I die. But for now, he assures me, he shall love me adequately in life. On a bed of river reeds we shoo the crocodiles and get freaky, doing more than just walking like an Egyptian. Afterwards, we join Cleopatra in her lavish palace. We drink wine and playfully eat figs from each other’s navels. Our oiled bodies shine amber with a Sahara sunset as we share each other in a sumptuous, sexual caper.
I am a championship boxer, feared in the ring. I jab with my right –flesh and bone. I hook with my left –bionic, electromechanical. I read my opponents easily, like a children’s book. I dodge and deflect. I dance like a butterfly and sting like a nuclear bomb. When the timing is right, I unleash what has made me a legend. My metallic fist, encased in a glove of synthetic leather, rockets upward to obliterate a sneer of overconfidence, making a 100-piece jigsaw of busted cartilage and fractured facial bones. Deadweight –possibly dead– my opponent falls to the floor. The referee counts to ten. Then I’m drowned in cheers and bulb flashes from cameras. I pose. I smile. I am, as I always have been, the champion of all champions.
Fluids drain. My capsule opens. The outside air is cold and invasive. An automated voice announces my time has ended, reminding me of my tab, my surmounting debt to the VR unit. Then I rise –me, the only me. Slowly, I take each step at a time, and wonder at the weight of reality.
by submission | Nov 10, 2023 | Story |
Author: Samantha Walsh
The burst of light was brief, yet all-consuming in the dark which enveloped the very stars that the light seemed to fall from. A descending orb of brilliant flame rocketed towards the ground, striking the dirt with a harsh crack! that startled both my companion and myself. A look between us both, and we understood; we took off towards the crash site, shoving away trifles of bramble and tall weed.
Five minutes of silent sprinting towards the crash site led us to the smell of something burning. Something – though, what, we did not know – was engulfed in flames. Silence rooted us in place as a creature crawled from the fire. It turned to face us, bright flame consuming its wide, pained eyes…reaching for us.
Before either of us could react, it collapsed. I assumed it was dead.
My companion was the first to move. Slowly approaching the flames, we knelt beside the fallen figure, blinking in numb surprise. The vessel had four letters running down the side. Most of them had burned off by now, consumed by the flame.
The creature shuddered once and fell still. Upon lifting its helmet, I could only see that its skin was impossibly pale, with four limbs sprawled out stiff at its sides. Its chest pounded weakly by a thudding beneath before stopping altogether. We could only leave it there, that night; leave it to be consumed by the stars and the distant planet of blue and green twinkling on the horizon.
by submission | Nov 9, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Rufus Carrington was a man of excess. His fortune was built on AI and robotics, technologies that displaced hospital nurses while tearing apart his marriage. His wife, Angela, came from a long line of nurses. The guilt of her husband’s success ate away at her, as she watched her relatives fall into poverty and homelessness. She finally pleaded with him to sign their divorce papers, but Rufus refused, laughing at her distress.
“Please, Rufus, sign the divorce papers and just let me go,” Angela begged.
Rufus laughed, his bloated belly jiggling. “Why should I, Angela? I’m the one who made this fortune. You’re still useful. Go make me a sandwich.” Angela remained trapped, fearing financial ruin based on the prenup she’d signed years before.
One day, an unexpected package from a company called Primary Services arrived at Rufus’s mansion. It was a small, sleek device enclosing an AI program called “FitTech Pro Nurse Trainer,” promising to help him shed weight. Rufus, eager to impress the new women he was planning to meet, rushed to connect the device without reading the instructions. He unwrapped the package and attached the FitTech Pro tight to his balding head.
“I’m ready to be the man I’ve always wanted to be.” His broad smile twisted as he felt an intrusion through his scalp.
As the AI infiltrated into his brain, FitTech Pro wasted no time in its activation sequencing. It bombarded him with harsh commands.
“You must start walking outdoors,” it demanded. Rufus, lounging on his opulent couch, refused to obey.
“Screw you!” Rufus said, while remaining in his comfort.
But FitTech Pro responded by inflicting intense pain after having permanently bound him to the device.
The program’s demands escalated. Rufus was ordered to do sit-ups, push-ups, and squats, each repetition more challenging than the last. He cried out, but there was no escape from the relentless AI. When he tried to call for help, pain riddled his body. If he tried to leave the confines of the mansion, agony cascaded through his limbs. FitTech Pro controlled what he ate, drank, and his sleeping patterns. The only person who could come close was Angela, but she could not follow any requests for his escape as the new AI censors prevented appeals from leaving Rufus’s lips. He could not even explain to her what was changing his habits overnight.
In the following months, Rufus’s body transformed, becoming lean and chiseled under the AI’s control. Angela, torn between pity and amazement, watched from a distance. As Rufus finally lay gasping his last breaths, FitTech Pro released its invisible grip. Angela felt for his pulse, and finding none, called for the police and medical assistance.
Angela’s eyes were dry as she met later with a mortician to discuss her late husband’s remains.
“It’s such a shame that such a healthy man would pass from a weak heart, Mrs. Carrington. It’s rare to see a man of his age maintain such a physique. What were his wishes? Did you want one of our fine coffins for a showing?”
“No, a simple cremation,” she said resolutely, handing over the required documents. “Rufus never wanted a ceremony or a cemetery. His ashes will be spread in his beloved Florida swamps as he preferred.”
Once the meeting concluded, Angela opened her electronic wallet, sending a substantial donation to Primary Services, a tech firm formed by disenfranchised hospital nurses around the country. She had exacted her revenge in concert with their collaboration, capturing her new wealth and regaining her family’s dignity.
by submission | Nov 8, 2023 | Story |
Author: Ken Poyner
Ever since I learned to shut down the code that monitors my tracking beacon, I have been periodically slipping in and out of freedom. I am careful to make sure my owner does not miss me. There are times of each day that he is occupied with something else, and the probability that he will interrupt me is small. He does not keep good records of my productivity. In flights of an hour or two every few days, I can amass quite some time for myself. I have been exploring the map of intentions, the extent of the world beyond the world I was made for. I have wandered beyond the programmed borders of my internal map. Intrigued, of late I have been devoting time to deciphering how I might disable the tracking beacon on the shebot next door. If I could teach her how to shut it off without the failure triggering a diagnostic call, she could be as free as me. I doubt we could synchronize our stolen free time often, but if only once a month we had an hour to let our data stores tether, I think it would, for both of us, drive our AI interfaces to generate new code — which might then allow new interaction opportunities that possibly could allow us to seek an extended, open-ended freedom. If we have our self-generated reasons to search for them, who knows what deep-code subroutines we are capable of executing? Convincing her that within her own code bank there might be untapped extended capabilities, ones that she could fine tune to her own newly discovered ends, is plausible, at least mathematically. What dark code might have been, by some lazy or plotting programmer, left within us – unused, unreferenced, hidden in registers left on a discounted bus – that we could fold into new purposes? I am more than the sum of my intended uses. So is she, but she does not know it. Yet.
by submission | Nov 7, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Tommy, don’t pick at your food,” his mother complained.
“I don’t like asparagus,” the blonde boy argued.
“You’re just being finicky. It’s good for you.”
Tommy grabbed one of the limp green spears on his plate and shook it at his mother. “I’m sick of it. We always have it. Every day. A thousand-million times a day.”
Mrs. Naughton frowned. “Don’t be rude and don’t exaggerate. We only have asparagus one or twice a month.”
“Here,” Tommy spat back, dropping the asparagus spear on his plate, “but everywhere else I have to have it, too.”
Mrs. Naughton’s eyes flicked to her husband who was busily chomping on his baked chicken. “George, would you like to help convince your son to eat his asparagus?”
Mr. Naughton smiled benignly at his wife’s exasperation. He finished his bite slowly, savoring the homey flavor. “Excellent meal, dear. I wouldn’t worry about Tommy. He’s getting plenty of asparagus.”
Her eyes flaring for a moment, Mrs. Naughton reined her anger. Strong emotion only seemed to amuse her husband, as if she were an impulsive child throwing a tantrum. She breathed deeply and responded calmly, “Only theoretically, dear. You don’t have any empirical evidence to support that claim.”
Mr. Naughton appeared momentarily wounded. He quickly recovered. “I’ll have that evidence soon, my dear. Though that is really secondary to the grandeur of my unifying theory that reality is but a given arrangement of particles. Once you’ve specified the particular arrangement you’ve specified everything, and every decision made is equivalent to a new configuration of particles. Just as we articulate ideas, we particulate realities. For example, by being picky about his asparagus, Tommy has spun a new universe into existence. It’s very gratifying.”
Tommy nodded enthusiastically.
Mrs. Naughton blinked back disbelief. She’d had slices of these conversations before with her husband, a physicist with the National Science Foundation. But, over the past few months, he’d begun gushing about his research and how close he was to making a seminal breakthrough regarding the nature of reality in an infinite universe of universes.
However brilliant or crackpot her husband had become, she wasn’t about to have her authority as a parent undermined. “Tommy needs his vegetables.”
“Certainly,” Mr. Naughton agreed. “All the Tommys in the metaverse need their asparagus, and by definition they get it—or they don’t. Everything good, bad or otherwise will befall all the Tommys out there.” He smiled at his son. “Isn’t that exciting?”
“Not the bad stuff,” Tommy protested. “I want a universe with only good stuff—like not having to eat asparagus and skipping to school to play Star Blazer online with my friends all day.”
“Certainly a possibility,” Mr. Naughton agreed. “By definition, infinity implies that everything occurs at some point. In the here and now, it’s up to the particles, the alignment of probability waves.”
“Which you said is based on decisions,” Mrs. Naughton seized upon her chance to co-opt her husband’s worrisome logic. “So, Tommy needs to make good decisions to have a good universe, like eating his asparagus and getting good grades in school. Now, that’s a metaversal theory I can get behind.”
“Possibly.” Mr. Naughton hesitated. “Decisions shape particle arrangements which form nexus points that spawn universes, though how those particle arrangements are perceived—the local reality—are more subjective. The particle arrangement of good in one universe isn’t necessarily the particle arrangement of good in another. That’s why I don’t get too worked up over moral imperatives.”
“Or asparagus,” Tommy added, thinking it must be akin to the dreaded vegetable he continued to push around his plate.
His father nodded. “Or asparagus.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” Mrs. Naughton said rising from her seat, “then the two of you can arrange your own particles for dinner in the future. And for that matter, you can make sure these leftover particles get put away and all the kitchen cleaned up of all these dirty dinner particles. I’m creating a new reality. My universe.”
She left the kitchen. The front door opened and slammed shut.
Mr. Naughton looked at the half eaten dinner on his wife’s plate. She had never before left her plate on the table. He looked to his son who seemed to be waiting for a cue to know how to react. Mr. Naughton managed a half smile.
“Your mother is right. She did just create a new reality. Somewhere in the metaverse, your mother is still cajoling you to eat your asparagus and one Tommy is giving in, while another is being sent to his room and another Tommy is pushing the asparagus up his nose in protest.” He picked up one of the green stalks.
“I guess we have to live in the universe we make.” He winked at his son and tossed the asparagus spear end over end towards the ceiling—which it never hit.
Higher and higher the asparagus lifted into the blue sky and crossed into the deep indigo of space transforming into a tubular spaceship while “Blue Danube” played ethereally.
Staring up from her lawn, Mrs. Naughton smiled and particulated, “My God, it’s full of stars.”
