Bugs

by submission | Oct 4, 2007 | Story

Author : Adam Wiesen

(Dark sludge slides across the matte surface like an oil spill. Hands reach down, grip and…)

…effects of the sickgun weren’t wearing off like he’d hoped. Joya whimpered from the back seat. She’d taken the worst of it: twelve seconds of flashing ultraviolet to the face followed by 94 ghz millimeter waves. Inside, she was maybe fine, but her nerves were on fire, and she had the equilibrium of an 84-year old whiskey disciple. Amit wasn’t much better, had no idea how he was keeping the car straight. Bad as the sickgun was, though, he knew there was worse. Behind them, police coralled protesters into black vans, and anyone who wasn’t brain damaged from jackboot-stomping was about to have their paradigms permanently shifted by the brainbugs under police headquarters.

“Where are we going?” Joya moaned from the rear.

“Just gotta get to the ferry, baby. Be fine once we hit the water.”

“What about Lynn?”

He had no answer. He’d last seen Lynne under a police dogpile. Joya repeated the question.

“You just ease back, baby. Pier’s coming up.”

“They’ll feed her to the ‘bugs!” she gasped. “Amit, we have to go back and get her! They’ll feed her to the ‘bugs and then she’ll… oh God.”

Joya wretched, cloying wet stink of spoiled parmesan cheese spreading across the back seat. Federal researchers bred brainbugs to grill criminals. They fed on myelated axons related to memory, and digested them slowly enough that they could be picked apart, fed into machines, translated. Pure information extraction, leaving a smooth patch where memories once grew. Started maybe with noble intentions, but it wasn’t long before ‘criminal’ took on more elastic meaning. Amit and Joya were teachers. Their union decided to strike. Feds tagged them ‘economic saboteurs’ for slowing urban infrastructure. Gave the cops brainbugs to aid in the pacifying effort. Now Lynne, 64-year old math teacher, was having the insides of her skull gnawed on to find where her shop steward was hiding.

Amit swerved, crashing through the pier’s rear gate, sped to the ferry. If he could get them across the border…he had family. They could hide. He wasn’t high enough on the food chain to matter. Police buzzship overhead hit spotlights, screamed for him to pull over. Amit taught history. Memories, on a racial scale, were what he’d built his life on. He’d be damned if he let some squirming insect chew them up, shit them out on some slide for the cops to sift through. He wiped his mouth, felt the sickgun’s effects acutely, vomit rising.

Up ahead, the ferry, great lake, mountains. Almost there. Almost…

(…retract. The brainbug’s intestine drains from the petri dish, processed and filed. Amit Pandya, slackjawed and blank, is wheeled aside. Hungry brainbugs mewl in their nearby pen as Joya, struggling feebly in her wheelchair, is brought forward. Hungry not much longer.)

New Beginnings

by submission | Oct 3, 2007 | Story

Author : D.J. Keim

The receptionist smiled. “It’s the third corridor on your left, opposite marriage counselling. Dr Sarkoski is expecting you in his office. That’s room 24.” Simon dutifully thanked the receptionist and followed her instructions. He knocked on the clouded glass door that awaited him.

The door opened revealing the welcoming smile of Dr. Sarkoski, “Ah Simon, we’ve been expecting you” he said, exchanging a handshake. Dr. Sarkoski six foot four, wore thick horn rimmed glasses and his efforts to conceal a receding hairline were glaringly obvious.

“And this, as I’m in no doubt you’ll remember, is Julia,” She smiled and moved her fingers in an effeminate wave. Simon smiled at her affection and took the seat next to her. He had met her once before, and she had been on his mind constantly. She was pretty: bright green eyes, a cute face and beautiful red hair. She was also nice, not that her personality mattered much.

“Now, as we are all here, I’ll just spend a few minutes detailing the procedure and effects, to ensure you both understand what the effect on you will be. The procedure is painless and, in over 1 in 500 cases, no adverse effects are experienced. However, as a precaution and to prevent discomfort we will place you under a general anaesthetic. After you have been sedated, our program will replace some of your expendable memories and insert a synthetic memory in its place. The standard package includes your first meeting, your first date and a basic level of personality attunement.”

“Umm, what is the personality attunement?” Julia interjected.

“Right.” Dr. Sarkoski hesitated briefly, wondering how to explain this to Julia, “If you imagine your relationship as two gears turning each other, the personality attunement smoothes the teeth to ensure you two mesh together better.”

“Oh, ok”

“As I was saying,” Dr Sarkoski announced, with a hint of annoyance that his standard monologue was interrupted, “We offer enhancements to the standard, that, by my calculations, would increase the probability of lifelong-partnership to up to 97%. These include measures to assure fidelity, to enhance both of your aesthetic opinions of each other and to remove potentially relationship-harming memories or attitudes. Like, removing some of your emotional ‘baggage,’ so to say.” He added, having noticed Julia’s bemusement. “This is done by adjusting some of your longer term memories, those that alter your interpersonal-perceptions.”

As Dr. Sarkoski returned to the rhythm of his sales piece, Simon lifted his hand and placed it on Julia’s, which was resting on the arm of her chair. Clasping it, Julia turned to face Simon and looked at him with eyes that would soon love him.

The Last Art on Earth

by submission | Sep 30, 2007 | Story

Author : Janna Layton

Cassandra walked down Lilac Street, past the same WMG Corporation superstores and chain restaurants on every Lilac Street in every city. “When you’re in a WMG City, you’re home!” a billboard declared. As she approached, the scanner read her retina to gather information from the marketing database. The billboard then displayed products WMG’s computers determined she might like.

She ignored the images and continued towards Heartville, one of a few scattered “unincorporated towns” of independent eateries and artist studios where WMG couldn’t do business. Supposedly. She thought of the zine in her purse. It looked inconspicuous, but no doubt WMG could do inconspicuous. One article praised a Heartville coffeehouse. Did the author, who had lived in the town for years, truly love it, or was he a “cuckoo,” an undercover WMG employee hired to promote “cuckoo eggs,” unincorporated town establishments secretly owned by WMG? The idea was hypothetical; they had no proof it was being done. “Why would WMG bother?” people asked. But as small as the towns’ businesses were, they were businesses, and Cassandra was sure WMG’s thinking was, “Why not?”

Condos gave way to shacks in Heartville, clean beige paintjobs to impromptu murals. Cassandra used to feel revitalized when entering it. Here was a place, she had thought, where art was art, where she wasn’t being monitored to determine how she could contribute profits to a monopoly. But perhaps even this sanctuary had been taken.

Once she had seen graffiti stating, “The last art on Earth.” Was she the last artist, with her poetry? No, that was vain, she told herself. Surely there were others. Surely most artists in Heartville were what they said they were.

It was possible, she thought, that a cuckoo had written the graffiti to assure residents Heartville was still rebellious and pure, and art still an escape.

She stopped by Joe’s Organic Bakery for two cupcakes. The flyers denouncing big-business agriculture: a disguise? She couldn’t tell, not even when Joe smiled at her.

A few blocks later she stepped inside a gallery, uncertain if doing so was hopeful or masochistic at that point. She liked a painting of an indigo horse, but immediately wondered if a WMG study had concluded the image would appeal to her demographic. Which was the worse prospect: for such paranoid thoughts to stay with her always or for them to disappear? Was the last art on Earth gone already, or was it right here and she couldn’t enjoy it?

“You okay?”

Cassandra turned towards a girl at an easel. “Yeah.”

A paper sign said bartering was welcome.

“Is a cupcake from Joe’s worth a drawing?” she asked.

“Definitely,” the girl replied, grabbing a pen. “Tell me what you want.”

Cassandra handed her a cupcake and a piece of paper from her writing notebook. She wanted something that she knew came from somewhere sincere. Something that, even if this artist was a WMG employee trying to lower her defenses, was created in her own mind.