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 Stephen R. Smith | Aug 28, 2007 | Story
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
I’m surprised you decided to come out here. No, no – I’m happy you did, just surprised. Your drink ok? Good.
You must find me fascinating, kind of the poster boy for post war re-creation. I’m not the only one you know, there are a lot more soldiers just like me.
All of this… equipment that keeps me alive, these legs that I’m walking on, the tube that I piss through… it’s the best that our government can buy. The best. Sure, they can buy bombs the size of buses, and bullets that shoot through tanks, but this – this is the state of the post-war medical art right here. No expense is too great when it comes to caring for our soldiers. That’s so damn true. No expense, and even that was too great.
You like me? You like this fucking machine they made me?
I did three tours, three goddamned tours. Do you know why? Do you know what kept me going back? Because after every one, when I got home, nobody could understand. You think you’re just like us, but we’ve experienced war, and you have no idea. I was just numb, and distant, always anxious. I’d go on week long benders, try to completely self destruct, and my girlfriend would make excuses, say it was ok, that it was normal. It’s not normal. The only way I could cope, the only way to get back to my new normal was to soldier up and go back to the front.
When that car bomb blew me in half, and they bolted all this shit onto me, they said I was all better, but I was no longer ‘suitable for re-deployment’. I’m supposed to just be ‘retired’ now.
Every friend I ever had, every connection I could ever manage with another human being, they cut me off, just like they cut my fucking legs off. They’re over there, deployed, and I’m stuck here, drinking in the Vet hall with you pencil pushing assholes. You want to write a story about me? You want to show the world the ‘face of the post war man’? Screw you. We fought to protect your freedoms in countries we’d never even heard of while you stayed home and wrote about how horrible the war is. You didn’t have the balls to serve, and you come here to make an example out of me? I bought these stripes with blood and honor, and for what? ‘Retirement’? And what am I to you? A story? I don’t think so.
You’re going to mean so much more to me.
You look tired. Don’t worry, it’s all ok. I’m going to give you a chance to do your part for the war effort.
Don’t get up. I know, you can’t. You’ve had the use of a perfectly good body for the whole war, and you’ve just been here pissing it away.
I’m not going to let it go to waste.
Go on, close your eyes. The Doc’s going to put you to good use. There are guys like me dying for what you’ve got; good heart, clean liver, working eyes. What the government can’t produce, the black market can provide. Here’s your chance to be a real contributor. Me? You’re going to make me a whole soldier again, and when they’re done stitching me back together, I’m going to march right back into the recruiting office and catch me a ride on the next transport back to my boys.
Not to worry. The government will just bury what’s left of you. That’s what they do.
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by Patricia Stewart | Aug 27, 2007 | Story
Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer
Cody Starr, the seventy-fifth Director of The Venusian Terraforming Program, removed his foot-gear and waded into the warm Venusian Ocean on the western shore of New America. The sun very slowly inched its way above the western horizon to begin the long Venusian day (equal to 243 Earth days). Eventually, he thought, we will have to do something to shorten the day to something more reasonable, or more importantly, to shorten these long, cold Venusian nights. But that would be a task for future Directors. Right now, Cody just wanted to bask in the warmth of the abnormally large sun (38% larger than it appears on Earth), and to listen to the rumble of crashing waves. Occasionally, the wind blown spray would reach his lips. How unusual, he thought, a fresh water ocean. That may take getting used to. As the sun rose on this new day, Cody allowed his mind to reflect back on the long journey that brought humanity to this unlikely shoreline…
It was over 1000 years ago that Planetologist Philip Gregory began the construction of The Great Solar Shade. The GSS, which orbited Venus like an opaque cylindrical version of Saturn’s rings, performed three primary functions:
1) It blocked most of the heat being delivered by the swollen sun.
2) It powered the converters that obtained breathable oxygen from Venus’ thick carbon dioxide atmosphere, and finally
3) Over the next eight centuries, it meticulously scooped up the rarified upper atmosphere of Venus, and gradually dissipated it into space in an effort to reduce the overall atmospheric density from 90 to 1.2 times Earth normal.
Then, two centuries ago, Dillon Holder began the process of corralling thousands of ice-asteroids to create Venus’ ocean. It was no easy feat to develop the technique that would shepherd over one billion cubic kilometers of ice from the asteroid belt down to the Venusian surface, while carefully avoiding the GSS on the way.
Just five decades ago, the Solar Shade was changed from opaque to semi-transparent, to gradually permit more sunlight to reach the surface. The Shade was also heavily magnetized to provide shielding from the potentially deadly solar wind, and cosmic rays. The planet was then seeded with a verity of hybrid plants and algae to remove most of the remaining carbon dioxide, and to provide the foundation of the planet’s food chain. Thirty years later, small animals and fish were introduced. Recently, robots began farming, and building the infrastructure that would be needed to support eventual human colonization. But for now, Cody was content to watch the genetically bioengineered birds dive into the ocean to catch the genetically boiengineered fish. Off in the distance, he could see…
“Cody. Cody.†Who could be calling him, he wondered? He turned to look toward the distant dunes. Nobody was there, but he could hear faint traffic sounds: cars, trucks, horns, and sirens.
“Cody. Scott will be here in 10 minutes. Life insurance doesn’t sell itself you know. You’ve got quotas to meet. Let’s go.â€
Through his squinted eyes, Cody could see his wife pull back the bedroom curtains, exposing the smog-covered skyline of Los Angeles in the distance. He buried his face in his pillow. “Nooooo.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 Duncan Shields | Aug 24, 2007 | Story
Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer
That’s the thing about silicates. They get cancer from radiation, just like us, except their tumors are jewels.
The silicate in front of me here has a head full of diamonds.
He’s looking up at me with his prism eyes. When the sun shines through the hospital window, the sunlight refracts through them and shoots little rainbows around. He’s no smarter than a cat now.
Their presence here was a history of shame. They landed in their glittering spaceships made of super-dense manufactured crystal in a park in Philadelphia.
Their technology was entirely built around the manipulation of crystal growth. They created crystal that made diamonds look brittle. They ate sand and rock. Their stomachs were kilns. They could make their bodies faceted and sharp with a thought.
All was peaceful for a time until the first few of them got sick. Their doctors worked with our doctors to find a cure before they realized what was happening.
Cancer. Just like humans.
The first tumours to be removed were a revelation. Emeralds.
Once the news got out, a black mark on the history of humanity started.
Many of the silicates were taken prisoner and bathed in radiation to produce raw emeralds, diamonds, rubies and hundreds of other types of valuable rocks. The market was flooded, with the jewels ceasing to be valuable after six horrible years.
Diplomacy healed the wounds over the next decade but there was still bitterness on both sides
Any jewelry at all is seen as gauche now.
My friend, Rock Opal Truestone, is going to be dead before the week is out. There’s still no cure for cancer but at least the egg-sized diamond eating the mental pathways behind his beautiful eyes is worthless.
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