by Stephen R. Smith | Nov 28, 2006 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
The human eye is made up of two different types of photoreceptive elements known as rods and cones. These elements convert the light from everything you look at into information that is passed electrochemically to the brain for interpretation.
An interesting characteristic of this mechanism of data capture and delivery is that each time the rods and cones fire, they must reset before firing again. This creates a constant repeating pattern of image data interspersed with microscopic moments of the absence of data. The human brain fills in these moments of blindness in order to maintain the illusion of a constant uninterrupted visual reality. This phenomenon is known as the persistence of vision.
We know that these microscopic voids in data extend to the other mechanisms of human sensory perception. Your brain maintains a ghost or echo of the sight or sound it captures to fill in the gaps while the input mechanism is offline, readying itself for more real data. The brain is highly adept at compensating for and thus hiding the staccato gapping of your senses.
The amount of time spent by the brain waiting for real data from your senses is considerable. We are going to capitalize on these moments of sensory inactivity. We are going to teach you things in the troughs of the sensory wave.
We will teach you languages. We will bestow upon you skills. You will learn how to build things, and to deconstruct things. You will know how to organize and execute plans you would not now dream possible.
We are going to prepare you.
You will learn of the people you will be entrusted to protect. You will come to know the operational mandate. You will accept it as truth.
We will show you how your leaders have lied.
When the time comes, you will be ready.
We will impart all of this knowledge unto you while no one is looking.
Not even you.
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by Kathy Kachelries | Nov 27, 2006 | Story
The Lethe was plastic, white. It bore the black logo of Mnemoprises and a large yellow caution sticker that warned ebayers and Chinatown chopshop owners that it was illegal to use without proper company-granted certification. None of them listened, of course. The list of warnings was seemingly endless, but Xiu knew that most of the threats were empty. Permanent neurological damage. Wasn’t that what the machine was for?
She operated out of a small room in the back of a tourist dump, and every day she had to brush past curtains of t-shirts (“3 for $10!” the handwritten sign informed) and “Vacation souvenir’s!!!” (punctuation intact). The store had belonged to her father, and his father before him, and now it belonged to her brother. As the oldest, it should have gone to her, but they were a traditional family. A woman couldn’t be trusted to run the business. This didn’t bother Xiu, who made more money from one appointment than her brother made in a week. They were different businesses, tourist dumps and memory holes. People paid more to forget than to remember.
Her appointment book that day was filled with the usual: witnesses who didn’t want to take the stand, thieves who didn’t want to know where their money came from in case the feds mindmined them. She was an expert, though she lacked the certificate Mnemoprises offered. The man who had sold her the Lethe had taught her the subtleties of memory. Her first appointment wanted to forget a night in Atlantic City, where he’d gambled away half of his child’s college fund. “I’m going to claim I was robbed,” he told her. Implausible, but it wasn’t Xiu’s job to question. She used the device like a surgeon, precise and cool as a sharp scalpel. There was no collateral damage.
The second was a love story, a woman whose husband had left her for a history teacher. A male history teacher, no less. “How could I have known?” she sobbed. Again, the scalpel.
The last client, the one at the end of the day, was a woman with straight brown hair and a child in tow. He couldn’t have been older than eight. Xiu motioned to the chair in front of the Lethe, but the woman nudged the boy forward. He sat on the stool. His eyes were red and he sniffed, rubbing his nose on the sleeve of his sweatshirt and leaving a sparkling line of mucus. Xiu gestured the woman back into the tourist dump.
“I don’t do this on kids,” she said.
“It’s nothing bad,” the woman told her. “He just needs someone to help. I’ll pay well.”
Xiu needed to be paid well. “What’s the case?”
“It’s my husband’s father,” she said. “His grandfather. They were very close.”
Xiu frowned and tugged at the hem of her shirt, suddenly nervous. “He died,” she said. It was more of a statement than a question.
“Yes.”
Xiu considered this, silently weighing her options. “His mind is still growing,”
“He’s been crying for months.”
“He misses his grandfather. It’s natural.”
“It’s not natural to cry for months.”
Her fingers knotted around the elastic hem. “And you need him wiped. Everything.”
“Can’t you just make him forget that he’s dead?”
“If he knows he had a grandfather, he’ll wonder where that grandfather went. Wiping’s the only solution.”
The woman was silent for a long time. Slowly, she reached into her purse and withdrew a thick envelope. Only cash had value here. Xiu accepted it with a subtle bow of her head. “He’ll regret this,” she warned. “Never knowing his grandfather.”
“He won’t know to regret it,” the woman told her. Somehow, the woman knew more about this procedure than she did.
Xiu led her back into the room and sat down opposite the boy, whose eyes were dark and pink from endless rubbing. “Give me your hand,” she said, and placed his small palm against the larger palm outline on the Lethe. Xiu turned on the machine and it hummed to life, ready to swallow the past.
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by submission | Nov 26, 2006 | Story |
Author : James Mallek
It was with a running leap that he finally brought himself to do it. John hurled himself off the top of the eighty-story Hertz Building.
5 seconds of free fall before he righted himself, face down, parallel to the ground.
Terminal velocity achieved, no more acceleration. Immediately reversing his acceleration would splatter his guts against the inside of his suit. A twitch of his calf ignited the chemical rockets sticking out of his ankles. Horizontal velocity increasing, thus a complete increase of net velocity.
“Shut up Computer.”
The suits A.I. promptly stopped giving a narration of his actions.
Spreading his arms granted lift, and he swung gently upward between the towering skyscrapers. An optimal state of powered flight had been achieved.
“Damnit Computer I told you to shut it!”
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by submission | Nov 25, 2006 | Story |
Author : Matt Brubeck
We’re in the Starbucks next to the club, hanging out after a show. Aaron looks up and gives a brief snort. “Check it out,” he says, nodding toward the door. I see a trio of young kids, studying the menu and trying to look cool. I recognize them from the crowd at the concert.
“Time travelers,” Aaron says through a mouthful of croissant. “New arrivals, I’m guessing.”
“What? I think they’re college students.”
“Look again.” Aaron’s eyes twitch toward the newcomers, then back to me. “Their clothes are totally ridiculous, like they were picked out of random fashion magazines from the last decade.”
“I thought they dressed like that because they’re hipsters,” I say, looking again at their off-brand sneakers and thrift-store sweatshirts.
“You know how you always see these kids in low-paying service jobs?” Aaron goes on. “Retail, food service. It’s because they don’t have time to learn the period knowledge they’d need for a trade or professional job. See, I’ve figured it out.” Aaron leans over the table, whispering. “Say you’re a rich kid from the future on wanderjahr. You’ve got a time machine, but what do you do with it? Great Moments In History aren’t going to impress your friends. But if you can see a classic band from the twenty-first century before they made it big?” Aaron raises his eyebrows syly. “Watch, I’m gonna go mess with them.”
Aaron washes his pastry down with a swig of coffee, then wanders over to talk to the trio. I can’t hear their replies, but Aaron’s voice carries across the room. “Weren’t you guys at the show? Oh yeah, I know… Did you see them play here last week? Oh man, it was probably their best set ever… Yeah, a real once in a lifetime thing… Yeah, cool… Hey, I gotta go.”
Back at our apartment, we unearth my camera and download the last month’s worth of photos onto Aaron’s laptop. Aaron flips through images until he finds what he’s looking for. “Got ’em,” he proclaims, handing me the computer. On the screen is a photograph from last month’s show. In the back of the club, next to the exit, a trio of hipsters stands in familiar outfits, holding paper cups marked with a distinctive green-and-black logo.
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by submission | Nov 24, 2006 | Story |
Author : Kevin Byrne
The adults were all sitting down, watching the children interact with one another; to a soul, they all said the same thing to me: “I cannot believe how well-behaved your son is. We try so hard just to get our child to even listen to what we’re saying, much less do what we tell them.
“What’s your secret?”
I lean in and whisper. “My wife and I drill it into him.”
They all smirk and nod. “Yeah, right.”
At that point, I call my son over; when he arrives, I continue the conversation. “Seriously, we’ve drilled it into him.”
I lift the flap of scalp to show the inch-by-inch square where you can see his brain. “We opened up his skull and inserted electrodes; we were able to turn the behavioral patterns we wanted him to follow into binary code and transmitted them directly into his brain.”
I replaced the flap and told him that he could go back and play with the other kids. I picked up my drink and smiled.
“Next week, we’re teaching him French.”
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by submission | Nov 23, 2006 | Story |
Author : Alex Meggitt
I shift around on the couch, flipping through the channels and trying to make myself comfortable. Tim is sitting on the other end, watching the television cycle through sounds and images. The complacent look in his eye clears for a second as he sits upright and slaps me on the shoulder.
“Go back a couple,†he says, and I tap the down arrow on the remote until he gives the signal and the screen settles on a familiar sitcom.
“You’ve seen this like a dozen times,†I say.
“Yeah, but I like it,†he says. I sigh and try to balance the remote lengthways on the couch’s arm. It wavers for a few seconds then falls. When blindly groping the floor proves worthless, I turn on the only lamp within arm’s reach.
“That lamp kind of sucks,†Tim says without looking away from the TV. “Wal-Mart’s having a sale this week. They’ve got some good ones. Saw it in the paper.â€
Still bending forward in my seat, now looking under the table next to me, I turn my head to look at him. He’s still transfixed by the screen. After a second, I give up and say I’m hungry.
“Then let’s go to McDonald’s when the show’s over.â€
“Why McDonald’s?â€
“What? Cause I like it. It’s good. You like it, too.â€
I lean back into a normal sitting position. “We go there all the time.â€
“Cause it’s good.†He doesn’t close his mouth completely at the end of the sentence, and I stare at the bottoms of his front teeth. They’re very white despite the number of cigarettes he smokes per day. Mine aren’t comparable. He’s been telling me to buy his brand of toothpaste for a while.
When the commercials begin, Tim slouches a little and looks at the ceiling. He’s thinking, and the moment he opens his mouth, I cut him off.
“Tell me something,†I say, pulling a folded piece of paper out of my pocket. I’ve practiced in my head for a while now. Slowly and purposefully, I unfold the paper at an angle that lets him read. His eyes get a little wider as he recognizes the words printed on the gray watermark pattern. It’s his pay stub, a weekly check from a job he’s never mentioned. I have a question to ask, but it comes out a mashup of every topic in my head. “The catalogs, the checks. Honestly. Just tell me how long.â€
“Why’d you go through my stuff?†he says.
“I went to borrow your toothpaste because mine ran out. I found it in there.â€
“It’s good stuff, isn’t it? Whitens,†he says, smiling a little.
“Come on. How long have you been doing this? Tell me how long you’ve been selling me things.â€
He looks at me, makes a sound, and hesitates. I glare.
“Remember when we were sixteen? And I told you to get a few more controllers for your Nintendo?â€
“Jesus.â€
“I mean, it was just meant to be a summer job at that point. But they liked me. And it’s good money.â€
I stand up, looking at the floor as I rise, and walk out of the room. When I return a minute later with my coat on, he’s still looking at the point where I turned the corner and went out of sight.
“Are you going to tell the rest of the guys about this?†he asks. “If they all know, I’ll find another group of people. I’ll have to move. I like you guys.â€
“I thought we were going to McDonald’s. Come on.â€
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