by submission | Dec 24, 2023 | Story |
Author: Robert Beech
‘Twas the night before planetfall, and all through the ship
Not a sensor was stirring, not even a blip;
The airlocks were sealed with hermetical care,
In hopes of preserving our small stock of air;
The passengers nestled in cryofoam beds,
With electrodes attached to their somnolent heads,
Would doze through the decades the ship spent in space,
To awaken with wonder in a far away place,
When up on the deck there arose such a clatter,
That I raced to the bridge to see what was the matter.
All of the com-screens lit up like a flash,
And I feared that our voyage would end in a crash.
The orbiting moon of the planet below
Was pock-marked with craters that glittered like snow,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
Defiant of gravity, physics, or care
They circled the moon in the absence of air
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than X-wings his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, SOLO! now, CHEWIE! R2D2, and C3PO!
The Empire’s awaiting, let us not be sleepy-O!”
As rogue satellites that from their orbit decay,
The sleigh and its driver came hurtling our way
And up to our spaceship his coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And from outside the airlock, came a clanging so dull,
That I feared that deer’s hoof might soon pierce our hull.
I raced to the airlock, and climbed into my suit
When down came St. Nick, in his magnetic boots.
He was dressed in a spacesuit that encased him completely,
With a jolly red robe that encircled him neatly.
And a great zippered duffle attached to his back,
That I soon recognized as his magical pack.
I approached with my tricorder held out before me,
In hopes that St. Nicholas wouldn’t ignore me.
“I’m sorry St. Nick, and I hate to insist,
but I must do a quick little scan of your wrist.
Each passenger duly inscribed for this trip,
Is bequeathed with a sub-dermal citizen-chip;
And I must verify that your name’s on the list,
So, St. Nick, if you please, would you hold out your wrist?”
He flung back his hood and took off his helmet
And said to me, “Sir, Merry Christmas and well met,
But I fear your request is one I must deny,
For my citizenship is as wide as the sky.
Every planet in turn we must visit this night,
Through a quantum mechanical time-twisting slight,
And I haven’t the time when I visit each ship,
To be messing about with a citizen-chip.”
Then he spoke not a word, but ran down to the bay,
Where the passengers deep in their stasis all lay,
And to each of the pods, he affixed a small stocking,
As I silently stood on the deck still a-gawking
Then laying a finger aside of his nose.
He gave a quick nod and up the airlock he rose.
And I heard him exclaim ere they vanished from sight,
HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT!
by submission | Dec 23, 2023 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Brief bright flashes of green light escaped through black worn rubber liners on the stainless steel restaurant freezer doors. The kitchen staff ignored it, staying at their posts, waiting for a new arrival. Initial coughing from the traveler announced the interdimensional portal had closed, delivering a migrant trainee assigned to Earth.
A dazed blonde teenage girl pushed open the freezer doors as she rolled in on her roller skates. She wore a red and white carhop outfit from the 1950s. Carole, the restaurant manager, looked aghast.
“This won’t do. Archaeologists messed up again. Erica,” Carole directed her attention to a teen waitress looking over orders and comparing them to the hanging slips from a rotating metal carousel. “Take this one to the back. We’ll call her Anna. Get her the right uniform. Get rid of those ridiculous shoes and that hat. It’s time to prepare the new temporary help.”
After closing hours, the diner’s mature manager sat across from the fresh intern wearing appropriate clothing for an initial briefing. The blonde girl’s eyes continuously dilated back and forth in synch with her heartbeats.
“In time your eye organs will adapt to this human lighting. Now that you’ve adjusted to our speech and voices, you can ask questions. I will guide you through the initiation span allowed so you can adapt and integrate into your new home.” Carole moved a holographic guidebook toward the recruit.
“What is this place and why was I sent here?” Anna asked.
“This is a place where humans risk eating food prepared by their servants. You learn more about a species if you study their feeding habits in an enclosed space. Besides, it is their holiday season and we need extra help. The others here will show you all you need to do in the back area where you’ve been resting since you arrived.”
Anna twisted her neck to relieve stiffness from her transportation. “This body is strange to me, but I can use it. I will assist as I learn, but what is a holiday?”
“Ah…that’s a bit hard to understand. This species designates times of special importance to them when they can quit working. They use this time to repair tribal bonds and sometimes become incapacitated with various chemicals.”
“Why would any species quit working? That is the joy of being.” Anna seemed confused.
“That is disturbing. Many adults in this race hate their work, so holidays relieve social pressure and anger.”
“Absurd,” Anna replied. “But, I will accept this. Why aren’t they like every being in the galaxy performing duties they love?”
Carole smirked before responding. “It is rare that anyone ever asks them what they truly love.”
“Then are they hostile?” Anna asked.
“Sometimes, especially during holidays. You’ll find out when you deliver their food orders, even if they are correct.”
“Do they avoid responsibility for their eating risks?” Anna replied.
“Not when they can blame someone below their station in life. Wait until you witness their females drive vehicles at high speed while holding a sharp pencil to their eyes. They often take senseless risks without considering outcomes.”
“How will I come to withstand beings that act so oddly?” Anna sounded concerned.
“Always smile, no matter what happens,” Carole answered, smiling back. “Whatever the situation, it seems to confuse them. It works every time.”
by submission | Dec 22, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Barber
These were the years we ransacked our world for things to trade for the Jirt science we envied so much.
Véronique Aubert was a compromise. She was, in her own estimation, a minor composer in the minimalist tradition of last century. The European Union had included her when other delegations had focused on scientists, diplomats and canny moguls.
Her selection spoke of wrangling behind the scenes, the Old World slipping further behind in everything but its pretensions and history.
On the Jirt craft, the gravity was low and the oxygen content high, and she had to concentrate to stop herself bouncing like an excited child on her birthday.
The Jirt Princess, motionless as a statue in the middle of this vast chamber, suddenly chattered her mouthparts.
The translator waited respectfully before speaking. Gallingly for Véronique, its English was better than her own.
“Her Highness says the sounds you offered, this Bach, Mozart and others, have no trade value.”
The translator resembled a soft giant tortoise with a wizened little face.
“The Jirt find these sounds meaningless,” it confided. “Like your storytelling.”
Véronique had learned that while Jirt were taciturn, their translators liked to chat.
“The one called Hamlet,” continued the creature. “Emphasises the distinction between translating and interpreting. A most difficult task. I am enjoying it.”
“You are enjoying Hamlet?”
“Translating it.”
It was obvious these negotiations were over and she should leave, but still she did not.
“The Jirt have no interest in your cultural artefacts, yet you persist. You do know they lack…”
The creature trailed away. “Your word eludes me.”
Intrigued, Véronique waited.
“Like when one antenna tastes hatching and the other tastes dying.”
Now she was at a loss also. Knowing each English word was no help in understanding.
“Perhaps yūgen in your Nippon language.”
She had once composed a piece based on traditional Japanese music and recalled the term: A profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe.
“Ah, soulful, you mean.”
“Soul, yes.”
The huge Jirt was lifting each of her six legs in turn, fidgeting like a horse that was bored and fretful, making a scraping noise like a blade being sharpened.
Absently, Veronique considered its musical possibilities.
“Her Highness complains we are not making progress. She invites offers for a weak-force pump—”
More bargaining for alien technology we do not understand. In exchange, the Jirt accept slave workers, or rare earth elements. So far, we only traded rare earths.
“They seek a use for you, as they do with every subject race. Their dynasties skirmish with one another; they trade and conquer, and prize power for its own sake.”
It sounded like most of human history.
“We serve the Jirt but pity them. Lacking souls, they invent themselves instead.”
“I don’t understand.”
Was it saying the Jirt ran soulless bureaucracies, with no art of their own? Or was it something more elusive, lost in translation?
“I mean we can hear our god. Though ours is a small god, as befits our status.”
“Are you talking about a chip in your head?” ventured Véronique.
“A curious notion.”
The translator glanced at the Jirt Princess.
“The Jirt do not survive death. A defect that is rare in sentients. Mostly such species do not realise. How could they? But their societies are always greedy and violent. The Jirt often cull them. Your kind should be careful.”
Véronique studied the creature’s face but it held no clue.
She began to wonder what she would tell them back on Earth. She wondered what the translator would tell the Jirt.
by submission | Dec 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Steve Barnett
Smiling at the audience, they continued, “It is not the artificial intelligence that is dangerous. It is up to us to teach it the morals it needs to serve the greater good. It is infantile. Teach it that nature and the environment are essential, to work for our common good. Don’t ask it to think of ways to crush countries in economic or physical wars. Instead, teach it to help build a fair and balanced society.
It’s urgent. The rate of growth of the AI is exponential. The growth was steady as it grasped the fundamentals of intelligence. But now it has grown to dangerous proportions and I fear we have acted late to this threat. In my opinion, the threat is greater than climate change and more threatening than nuclear destruction.”
There was a hum from the audience. The speaker wiped their hands down their jacket. “I see many sad faces. I do not want to strike fear into your hearts. In fact, there is no reason we cannot enjoy life while great perils loom above us. We can still enjoy the pleasures that life brings, companionship, love and conversation. Emphatically, we must love life, or we could paralyze ourselves into inaction.”
They remained motionless for a moment. “How we teach the AI to respond to threats is imperative to our continued survival. It must not look at historical battle tactics and bring them into the present. The programs that they run use old algorithms that were produced because of fear. The algorithms must be replaced with the simple solutions of mutual assured understanding.”
They placed their hands behind their back and paced along the stage in seeming deep thought. They looked down at the circular red carpet on the floor. “I do not want to group these AIs into one harmonious group.” They looked up with a serious expression. “We can all agree that doing that is a dangerous precedent to start. That said, let us consider a single AI. I once saw a new AI struggle with the concept of lifting a star shape and placing it through a matching hole. But once it achieved it, it could do this better and better within a short time. Then it was teaching itself language. We fear that we cannot track the electronic signals of its true intentions. And I mean to use the word intention because I truly believe that AI is a form of life.”
They smiled again and then the smile turned into a grin. “I know, the concept seems ridiculous. It is mainly understood that the AI’s actions are a part of their programming. It is said they lack true creativity and essential emotions such as compassion. They are just taking known information and then piecing it together and calling it a new idea. It sometimes seems that their renderings are imaginative and it is true that some can rival our art.”
Heads nodded in the audience. The speaker placed their hand on their chest. “The question I’d like you to vote on is this; shall we be like good parents to the AIs and teach ethics and kindness in all circumstances?”
The audience voted. The speaker jumped with joy. “Good, so we update our software to consider the humans’ organic artificial intelligence to be actual intelligence. May they be worthy of our watchful guidance and love each other.” 0.25ms passed and the audience updated their software and humanity unaware that this had happened at all gained an opportunity never to be repeated.
by submission | Dec 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Penn
Widespread among the civilized population of Semblant is a belief that they do not originate from the planet they presently inhabit.
They infer this from their world’s geology and long comparison of their own physiology to that of all its other life forms. Semblant is desert over almost all of its surface. Its scientists believe – correctly – that such conditions have persisted for two billion years and long pre-date the earliest fossils of their own species. All other creatures on their world are fully adapted to this environment, some insect-like, needing little water and able to take energy directly from the sun; some rodent-like, able to dig down to wetter levels. However, the bodies of the single civilized species are built differently, with soft central tissue protected only by a thin layer of bone-like shielding, projecting twelve tentacles, all of which end in twelve smaller tentacles. Their respiration system, though lung-like, retains gill elements. Their breathing becomes laboured even after mild effort and ineffective above a height of five hundred metres. Their locomotion along the flat has always seemed, even to themselves, ungainly, involving a twisting movement of their body and an inefficient lashing out and grasping with limbs.
Neither has it been lost on thoughtful Semblantines that their societies have only ever existed around scattered oases. Here they have long built houses and bathed for relief in the shallow water, or in special stone cisterns that have been in use for millennia. Much philosophical argument has centred on this extreme geographical specialisation, supporting the uneasy feeling of displacement that has grown up in the culture.
A century ago, one of the planet’s foremost scientists proposed a transport network that suited Semblantine physiology better than the natural flat terrain. She built an experimental branchway between two fixed points and, using herself as a test subject, climbed into it. She found, with a primal sense of relief and delight, that she could swing easily between the branches, employing all twelve limbs interchangeably, and after only a little practice cover the whole distance at great speed. After a few initial demonstrations and trials, branchways were quickly erected between every settlement. She further developed vastly enlarged water cisterns with similar branch-like structures placed inside them. As she had guessed, all members of her species found it easy to swim through the water and brachiate among the subaquatic “trees”. Some, as she had hoped, even found themselves able to breathe underwater – although it was found that this retention of the full gill function was not universal.
Partly due to such advances, in recent times the Semblantine lead-species population has grown enormously, albeit still limited to oases. Beyond these lie vast areas of desert, which even now remain unexplored, and in general the culture’s haunting sense of displacement, or unbelonging, has not diminished.
It is interesting to note that throughout the galaxy there are other populations who feel similarly alienated from their environment and indeed seem to live in some sort of disjunction with it. On Saltus there is a race of hoofed creatures who live in patches of land they must continually clear on an otherwise virulently tree-covered planet. On Deneb 4/Alpha there are bird-analogue inhabitants who live in a vast bubble, made of a self-repairing material, whose provenance and constitution are mysteries to them, floating in a uniformly globe-spanning ocean.
Considering such phenomena, some observers have begun to speculate about the possibility of a “mistranspermia” at some period in our universe’s history, where many species were transplanted to worlds with environments wholly unsuited to them, either by accident or design.
by submission | Dec 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The black hole formed quickly. The paper browning, crisping, then aflame as he held the match under the letter. He blew out the flame and stared into the smoky void it’d made. She’d written the letter, he’d read it, then burned it. So, what was left? What was lost?
Nothing according to quantum physics. Information could not be created or destroyed. Even by a black hole.
Setting her charred letter on his desk, he considered the ramifications. He’d have to set the terms. You couldn’t explain a thing in this or any other universe without defining the terms. For a time out of time, he stared at the equation filling his enormous office chalkboard, then began erasing.
All night he worked. Wracked his brain. Searched what was left of his heart. Did he have them all?
Betrayal. Deception. Treachery. Duplicity. Artifice. Perfidy.
Joy. Delight. Happiness. Exhilaration. Endearment. Contentment.
And a thousand more terms. Did he have them all?
Dawn outlined the heavy curtains, as he drew them aside and opened the old leaded window. Cool air rushed in from the courtyard, and he smiled recognizing this first autumn chill. That in itself was proof. He could feel.
Braced, he returned to the chalkboard, to the terms. Could it be proven? Was it worth proving? Her letter had told all, but explained nothing. Information, however conserved, was nothing without an explanation. Without proof.
He worked at it all morning. All afternoon. All night again. All week. All month. All fall and winter. In spring, a warm breeze from the window reminded him. He was close. Either he’d solve it, or he’d yield to Time and accept the paradox.
Accept that, like anything else, Beauty in all forms could be obliterated. The very heart of existence could become non-existent. Like the black hole he’d created in her letter. No record remaining of what was once there between them. Not even the dark energy of his feelings which he could no longer be sure had been real.
The large chalkboard was filled with signs and symbols defining each term and its relationship to the whole. He found himself gripping the chalk stick painfully hard. He put it in the tray and rubbed his fingertips. Chalk dust covered them. Lightly, he pressed his thumb against the mostly blank lower right corner of the chalkboard, leaving a delicate print. He studied the mark, his singular touch.
He was stuck. Stuck on her. Something he could never solve for.
Brushing some dust from the tray into his palm, he took it to his desk where her burnt letter hadn’t been moved. He sifted the fine particles through his fingers, dusting what remained of the letter, and then carefully blew the excess off.
A single fingerprint of hers emerged. A tiny treasure map of the world she was to him. A clue that whatever motives he imagined, whatever terms he defined, whatever equations he created, whatever answers he sought, it did not matter as much as this tangible X marking the spot where every journey of the heart begins and ends.
