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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by submission | Aug 25, 2007 | Story
Author : Grady Hendrix
There’s that clanking, again. There’s that ratcheting, sound. There’s that grinding of gears and that whining of servos. He’s gotten used to the way his guest bedroom sounds like a robot factory, ever since Grife Marauder showed up.
“Jim, you gotta take me in, man,†Grife’d said.
Grife was an old school punk, his entire body wasted away except for gorilla-sized arms maintained by years of drumming. James was used to seeing him under the stage lights, bald head gleaming arrogantly, but now he was scared, now he was pushing past James to get into his living room.
“What’s going on, Grife?â€
“I got…I don’t…I’m…they done something to me,†he managed.
“Who?â€
“I don’t know!†Grife shouted, then he clapped a hand over his mouth and pinched his lips together.
“Do you want some water?†James asked.
“No! No water.â€
“What happened?â€
“I woke up, right? This morning? We’re recording so I gotta be there by twelve. I look over, and this isn’t my arm.â€
“What’d you have last night?â€
“Nothing much. Sip of tequila, bit of Vicodin, couple of joints. Teeny bit of coke, a few Ambien to put me out.â€
“Well…†James said.
Grife knew James wasn’t taking him seriously, so he took his jacket off. His left forearm was covered in metal. Pistons ran up the sides. Silver and gold wires snaked through the core.
“Your arm is stuck in there?†James asked. “Let me get some soap so it won’t tear your skin.â€
Grife pulled on his forearm with all his strength and his skin stretched, gruesomely.
“It is my skin,†Grife said, tears streaming down his face. “Help me.â€
He spent the rest of the day in the guest bedroom with a blanket pulled over his head, watching TV. The next morning his entire arm was metal.
“Get it off,†he moaned.
“I can’t, Grife.†James said. “It’s growing out of you.â€
It was a beautiful arm, precision engineered and finely crafted but Grife couldn’t appreciate it.
“Maybe it’s psychosomatic,†James said.
“What?â€
“You said you were pissed that the band was getting into this post-punk thing and were replacing you with a drum machine on some of the tracks. Maybe your mind is reacting to that by turning you into a machine?â€
“I’m not turning into a machine!†Grife yelled and then he pulled the blanket over his head and sobbed until he passed out.
Every day, he sat in the dark room, growing. And every day there was less of Grife and more of what James had come to think of as the Grife-Machine. And now there was that clanking, again. There was that ratcheting and that whine of servos. He got up and went into the guest bedroom.
“Look, man,†James said. “I think we need to get you to the hospital.â€
The Grife-Machine rotated its speaker towards James.
“Luk mann,†it repeated, tonelessly. “Eye thank wee need two git u two thee huspitul.â€
And then it stood up, and it began to walk.
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by submission | Aug 23, 2007 | Story
Author : James Smith
Sarah’s eyes went dim for a second, and I figured she was getting mail. She squinted with one eye and said, “That’s weird. I just… got… headmail from my… from Richard.”
“What’s he say?”
“‘Wanna get dinner? Wear the red dress.'”
“Are you serious?”
“This is crazy…”
The waitress walked by, I beamed her the bill and tip, stood and put on my jacket. Sarah got up with me, looking vaguely distant.
“Are you still reading it? What’s he say?”
“This is just too weird. He’s got a girlfriend now. That’s good… Do I… Should I send it back to him? Let him know she didn’t get it?”
“What? Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Come on! Two years and he hasn’t forgotten your address? How many times do you defrag your long-term memory in a given year? Two, three times? Or you bog down? Get bottlenecks? And he hasn’t dumped your address yet?”
Sarah walked beside me, thinking. You can tell, somehow, the difference in the eyes, between the look that says, “considering your opinion” and the one that says, “wiring untold megabits of crap through my forebrain, probably porn, please kill me.”
She came up out of it. “So, I should just leave it.”
“Yeah, and it better not be there by tomorrow. Throw his headmail out with tonight’s self-doubts and thoughtcrimes.”
She stammered, looked for a word, didn’t find it, online even, because she didn’t know what she was looking for. So she closed her mouth and we just walked some more.
We came to the store where I’d seen the keyboard we couldn’t afford. I stopped and stared at it, let her walk a few steps before noticing I was gone. Counted the seconds. Felt her come up behind me.
“That the one you were waxing over so poetic last night?”
Sarah came around in front of me and I nodded, chin against her head. I smelled her hair. I watched the keys where our reflections cut the glare on the glass. I tested a palm against her hip, imagined those keys along that curve of thigh and played them, the kind of thing I’d play on a Sunday, the sunlight orange and silver where vertical slivers of sky could reach us. The cat at my heel.
She leaned back into me. I didn’t know if she was thinking about him just then. When we married, we agreed to offline any leftover sense data from past lovers. But he was back in there now. She could re-think his last thoughts to some other woman any time she wanted, and I figured I would have to do something about that.
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