Made in the System

by J.R. Blackwell | Feb 6, 2006 | Story

“Dude. I’ve found it.” The Systems voice chimed pleasantly from the walls of the house. Ryan looked up hopefully from his dinner, his brown hair falling into his face.

“What? The program?”

“No. Better.”

Ryan shook his head, turning back to his baby back ribs. “I asked you to find the program.”

“Dude. Shut up. This is way better than the free porn finder program you wanted. I found you a wife.” There was a bit of pride in the Systems masculine voice.

Ryan wiped his mouth. “What?”

“Three months ago you expressed the desire for a long term mate. I found her.”

Ryan ran to his computer room, where his System sphere was glowing with white light. “System, I don’t want a wife!”

“Hey, User Interface? You were the one whining at me, looking for free scenes of mating. The least you could do is thank me.”

Ryan crossed his arms, gazing at the sphere. “What does she look like?”

“You know, that is typical of you. I go to all this trouble to match your personality type, ph balance, find someone who would love you despite your neurotic fits and the first question you ask is what she looks like. Shallow bastard.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “It was just a question.” There was a pause and a three dimensional hologram illuminated the middle of the room. It was a girl in her middle twenties, wearing a baby blue sweater and silver pants. She was a little chunky around the waist, but she had cute pouty lips and smooth, tan skin.

“Oh. Huh.” Ryan shrugged and scratched his stubble. “She seems nice, I guess.”

“What the flying hells do you want? A holostar? I can’t even get you to find all the places on your own face when you shave. Tarla gets a 90% hygene rating. May I remind you that you clock in at 71%? You have no place to be picky. Besides, she’s wonderful.”

“I don’t know. I suppose she’s okay. She’s got very shiny hair.’

“Your damn right she does. That’s natural too. She makes more money that you do, and her System is quite comprehensive.”

“You’re not matching me up with a woman based on her System, are you?”

“No, but it is a nice System.”

Ryan tapped his foot. “I think you’re in love with her System.”

“I matched you up on all the personality traits and despite the fact that your civilized scores are far from perfect, she is willing to meet you.”

Ryan’s eyes were wide. “You talked to her?”

“I communicated with her System.” Ryan’s System sighed musically. “Wonderful, dynamic System. Her System predicts a 96% chance she would like to meet someone like you.”

Swallowing hard, Ryan put a hand on the sphere. “You really think she’ll like me?”

“Oh yeah. Her father was a neurotic gamer with delusions of grandeur and a heart of gold. She’ll love you. Especially if you cook her that rice noodle dish you eat every day.”

“That stuff is good! Don’t make fun! You don’t have taste buds.”

“No. But I do have taste.”

Love the Gun

by B. York | Feb 5, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Abigail used to cry her self to sleep every night because of another black eye, because of another bruise on her that she’d have to write off the next day. Her cheeks were stained and her doors were always locked. She never slept because she was afraid he’d wake her up. Abigail’s boyfriend was a complete and utter prick.

So one day, little Abby got herself a new boyfriend. Her old flame was always the jealous type, but Abby’s new fling burned him down like he was kindling.

Now Abby is happy with her new boy, and no other man will dare lay a finger on her. They walk hand in hand wherever they go and he glares at all the men before they even look her way. She knows how to turn him on would-be muggers; she knows how their faces change when they see him with her. First second is lust, second one is terror. Third? They don’t get a third.

Abby’s walking with her boy toy down the West-side block. You know, the West-side of Centuria. The place where even the United Militia won’t go. She’s walking with an easy stride because her boyfriend is walking next to her. They’re both shined up pretty, and both have grins that could scare the shit out of anyone with half a brain. However, as we all know, mutoids don’t have the luxury of half a brain.

Junkies. Criminal. Vile flesh-eating beasts. The mutoids killed them all, but there’s Abigail Winters still walking strong down the West-side block, hand in hand with her boy, bright as a daisy.

Let me tell you about Abigail.

Little Abigail came from a small part of New Utopia with a black eye and 63 credits to her name. She had an abusive boyfriend and showed him what justice really meant. They called her Little Abigail before she went to the West-side block because she was just above five feet tall and slender as a pylon beacon rod.

Now they call her Little Abby. Little Abby took her boyfriend to the West-side block and shot the fuck out of thirty eight mutoids before walking back into the main district with not a drop of blood on her.

Little Abby kissed her boyfriend’s cheek while he was still leaking smoke from his mouth.

The New RKX-Z Raygun. On Sale Now.

No Exit

by Kathy Kachelries | Feb 2, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

This way, she says, and I follow.

There was no real direction, of course. The surface had been frozen beneath a mile of ice long before humans evolved, but still, I follow. Two hours after we lost our way in the snowstorm, all directions have become meaningless.

When I was a child I read a story about an oceanaut who followed a rope to the bottom of the sea. That was how they did it, then: you held on to the rope, buried beneath suits of rubber and glass to hold off the thickest weight of the ocean, and when you were ready to surface, you followed it. Anyhow, he somehow lost his grip at the blackened base of the sea, where the heaviness of water prevented anyone from floating to the top. Down was up, up was down. So he chose a direction and swam.

Obviously, the guy survived to tell the tale. If you listen to it like that, it’s not even a very good story, but here’s what I remember: as he was moving, having committed to the direction with the last of his oxygen, the light of his helmet revealed small bubbles. They were moving quickly over the glass, and when he saw them, he knew. He was moving up. He was moving in the same direction as the air.

Here, though, that’s irrelevant. There are no air bubbles, and there’s no way to tell left from right. The needle of the compass has frozen in place and the horizon is a blinding blur of white and silver, so pale that I can’t tell the ground from the air. The sun pours over the atmosphere without revealing its position. Her body, coated in thick rubber and plastic and thrown blackly against the endless white, continues on. It leaves unshadowed footsteps in her wake. She says nothing further, though it’s possible that our communicators have frozen. They weren’t designed to stand cold for this long.

She keeps walking, as if she knows where she’s going. I follow, because that’s all I can do.

We All Fall Down

by J. Loseth | Feb 1, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

The first day the sun didn’t rise, it was business as usual. The trains ran, the offices were open, and we just used a little more electricity than normal. We went to work, fed our fish, and gossiped about the news coverage while waiting for the bus. Over dinner the television told us what a strange event this was and how many records it had broken.

The second day the sun didn’t rise, we thought it odd. Our gossip spread to the cubicles and the break room and we listened to the radio, curious and nonplussed. It was weird, we told our coworkers and our friends and the people we met on the bus. It was definitely very weird.

The fifth day the sun didn’t rise, we complained. Extra lights were brought in and the power companies grew worried. The television said that California had adopted a mandatory rolling business schedule in which workdays were completed in shifts to reduce power usage. There was talk of rationing and of national disasters.

The tenth day the sun didn’t rise, we were panicked. We went to our doctors, our psychiatrists, our personal trainers, begging for help. The pharmaceutical companies had to keep their factories open twenty-four hours a day to produce enough Prozac.

The thirteenth day the sun didn’t rise, a national emergency was declared. We heard that it was the same everywhere, that no country had been spared. Our crops failed and our businesses closed. Thousands of us were dead from exposure or suicide. Our leaders gave speech after speech and our scientists despaired.

On the eighteenth day the sun didn’t rise, we locked ourselves in our homes and apartments. We looted closed stores and fought over food. Our water stopped running and we pissed in the streets.

On the thirty-seventh day the sun didn’t rise, neither did we.