by admin | Mar 15, 2023 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
They’d tested it, of course, but she was the first person they’d installed it in.
The injections were painful, and numerous, the material marching through the subcutaneous layers of her flesh like an army of angry ants, and when it was done, she wore the material as a complete second skin, just beneath her own.
When they turned it on it was surreal, the loading screen and debugging information scrolling down her back, and her bare chest and across her stomach before being replaced with their logo, a lengthy copyright text, all in high contrast, glaring white against skin turned to charcoal, before clearing and settling into a tanned skin tone with a subtle, shifting, luminous hue.
The control unit was implanted through her navel, tucked safely behind the stomach wall, a port available for updates. They offered wireless, but the risk of being hacked was too great, so she opted for physical access only.
There were light sensors in the substrate that adapted the visual output based on the opaqueness of her clothing, turning off parts of her skin where no one could see to conserve energy, and adjusting her brilliance based on the time of day and ambient lighting. In time, the unit would learn her biorhythms, recognize her moods, and be able to tune its output accordingly.
The Formula 1 event brought her international attention, her body a scrolling kaleidoscope of sponsors’ logos and brand messaging blazing out around a minimalist two-piece swimsuit and sheer gown as she posed with drivers and their cars. The attention brought more contracts, and with it wealth.
Her partner was less appreciative.
“I hate what you’ve done to yourself,” he yelled at her one night after an evening event, “people used to look at me with you on my arm, they respected me.” He drank her expensive whisky from one of her imported crystal tumblers. “Now that you’re just,” he struggled for the words, “just a walking television set, nobody notices me at all. It’s humiliating.”
She almost asked if it was humiliating when he picked up the cheques for their evenings on the town to pay with her money, but instead, she just faded into the background and let him fume himself out.
The first time he hit her, she found applying coverup particularly difficult. She hadn’t worn makeup since the implant, she hadn’t needed to but she managed to cover the mark, she hadn’t forgotten how. After dinner, walking through the crowded restaurant, as all eyes turned to the glamorous couple, there were gasps and murmurs. Passing a mirror she realized her skin had produced garish purple and green bruises in the shape of rough hand marks on her arms and legs, her partner fumbling for words as he rushed her out the door to the waiting car.
The drive home was silent.
When she found out he was cheating, he knew – as soon as he walked through her door – her flesh the colour of obsidian, flames licking around her ankles to mid-calf, her face a mask of fury. He turned in the doorway and left, not bothering to pack. It was the last she would hear of him.
Later, curled in the bath, with an empty bottle of wine by her side, her flesh crawled with storm clouds, the occasional flash of lightning from the depths of the cooling water.
In the morning when the storm had cleared, she would be blue skies and sunshine and flowers. The literal picture of peace.
by submission | Mar 14, 2023 | Story |
Author: David Broz
A warship never took the same route twice, to or from battle. As the joke goes, it’s because they usually disintegrate on the way there or on the way back.
By all accounts, The Ebenezer was the luckiest starship in the Earth’s fleet, probably because the captain was no scrooge when it came to using the NeoNukes.
The captain had brought us to and from battle not just once, but half a dozen times. We had decapitated six planets, and we ourselves had not been disintegrated even once!
The WormDrive made space travel fast and easy, which of course meant that humans, in their great and infinite wisdom, decided that interstellar warfare should also be fast and easy. And so we went to war.
The plan was to find and attack every alien species we could, figuring that the best defense was a good offense. Those in their ivory tower reckoned that any alien we encountered would end up coming for our planet’s resources sooner or later, so let’s nuke them first just to be safe.
And so we built warships.
By sheer chance the development of a new weapon, the NeoNuke, happened at the same time as the WormDrive. It was a match made in heaven – or hell, depending on your point of view. With the NeoNukes, we could rain destruction down upon a planet without having to wait 10,000 years for the radiation to dissipate afterwards. After we blasted a planet back into the stone ages, we could, theoretically, go back and use the planet as we saw fit.
Our strategy was simple and horrible at the same time. We Wormed randomly around the galaxy, the ship’s computer jumping us from solar system to solar system, the computer looking for Goldilocks planets when we come out of Worm. The scan-and-plan takes only seconds. If the computer finds no Goldie, we jump again.
But should a Goldie be found, the ship instantly calculates a decapitation attack strategy. Its fast and decisive, targeting the city most likely to be the planet’s capital. In a single rain of hellfire and brimstone, we launch all of our weapons and follow them down into the atmosphere to finish the job with close range weaponry. We leave a message and a warning. We can come back if we want to, if we need to.
After one of our ships was followed back to earth somehow, our leaders made adjustments. The planet Earth itself was Wormed to another solar system from time to time. Complex algorithms known only to the ship’s computer knew the earth’s location, to prevent us from being followed. The second-to-last Worm always ended with a pause amongst a bevy of attack ships who lay in wait to ambush any follower.
We’ve just come out of Worm, in another random, unmapped solar system. We don’t have to look around. There’s a Goldie here, right here. It fills our viewport. The ship lurches forward.
As we tear down through the heavens, amongst the raining hell of our NeoNukes, we recognized the statue of liberty, all too late.
We had not been stingy with our nukes.
by Julian Miles | Mar 13, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
I’m no expert, but the big green flash followed by a noise reminiscent of a building collapsing makes me think it’s time to leave this habitat. Things about us start to shake. I look down, then tap the wall by his head to interrupt his concentration.
“Jimmy, it’s time to quit.”
He looks up at me, the lenses on his optics spinning as he refocuses up to people-size from the tiny circuit board in the control module.
“I only require a further four minutes, allowing for your interruption taking up thirty-five seconds of my time.”
A cloud of dust and lighter varieties of chunky flying crap gusts in from the left. I close my helmet and switch on the comms.
“Jimmy, we don’t have that long.”
My artificial partner gives a completely believable sigh.
“A sudden lack of breathable atmosphere is no impediment to my work, nor will the inevitable firestorm that follows cause problems, as my last integument upgrade rendered me impervious to non-stellar heat. Also, I will have sealed the control module by then.”
I love these new companion mechanics, which is why I volunteered for the beta, but their extended ramification processing is sometimes flaky.
“Jimmy, it’s not about the work environment or efficiency of repair. Nobody will need realistic summertime options in their climate suites after this accommodation wing is burned out. The whole habitat will be scrapped.”
The tiny soldering iron extruded from his smallest left finger goes dark.
“That is valid reasoning.”
“We should go.”
“I will close the control module first. It will be recyclable after the unit is scrapped.”
A long tongue of purple fire lashes from left to right across the hub we’re working in.
“Work fast.”
“Sealing is a complex process.”
Enough, now. I reach out and tap him on the head.
“Just put the lid on. It’s not worth losing either of us.”
He pauses and looks up at me.
“I am freespace rated. Only you will be in danger should this unit rupture.”
“Jimmy, it’s already compromised. There’s only a short period between event and emergency containment failure. If that happens, we’re likely to be lost in the debris field. We need to go. Now.”
“How do you know? There has been no status update issued.”
“The explosion probably took out the relay. That’s what happened minutes before the last time I nearly got killed surviving a habitat rupture. Things don’t blow around like there’s a storm for any reason except structural failure.”
“That is valid reasoning. I will simply ‘put the lid on’ as you suggest so that we can depart.”
The habitat upends as the gravity generator fails. Fortunately, it rises to the right-hand side, so I’m braced against the wall I was leaning on anyway. Jimmy flicks out a leg to balance himself without interrupting his work. I can feel increasing atmospheric turbulence through my suit.
“Jimmy. Abandon it. Time to go.”
“I only require forty seconds more.”
“We’ll be part of a cloud of freespace debris in less than thirty seconds. Abandon it!”
“How do you know?”
More than enough.
“Jimmy Jimmy. Override Kilo Tango. Cease repair. Exit unit.”
Before I can correct, Jimmy’s gone. I forgot how fast these things can be. The lid of the control module spins slowly away. I meant to get him to assist me – then again, being forced along at his speed might well do more damage than good.
Extending my incident armour, I curl up against a bulkhead corner before inflating joint bracing and setting my emergency anchor. See you later, Jimmy.
by submission | Mar 12, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
“He was the one afraid to cut the cake”
-Bob Seger
When workers joined the lines at the Gratiot Plant, they signed away their hands. Losing their hands was the first step toward gainful employment.
After three years, workers signed away their forearms. This gesture was necessary because the hands could do work not even the strongest forearms could. A pair of robotic hands could immediately lift fifty kilos on even a spindly armed worker. Engineers knew most men could not sustain robotic hands without the requisite forearms and biceps. But Gratiot would not invest in anything more than a set of bio-automated hands until a worker had delivered three years of productive labor.
If a worker reached their third anniversary, they earned their forearms. Then, two years later, if their non-robotic biceps still worked, the Gratiot engineers replaced those, too. Since the labor situation was dire, very few workers protested this arrangement. They accepted “bio-automation” as needful if not normal.
But for those workers who did not “make it,” the company kept industrial peace by telling their labor force that anyone whose body broke down would get sent to Fire Lake.
They said Fire Lake was a place of clean water, pristine beaches, and real trees. It was a compound of climate-controlled cottages where attendants fed residents gourmet food and clothed and bathed them since their limbs did not work. Rumor had it that Fire Lake was a pleasure dome so perfect it kept out all doubts, fears, memories.
But Fire Lake presented a powerful dilemma. Gratiot Plant workers knew they had to prove their productivity and manhood to earn forearms and biceps. No plant employee had a Fire Lake attendant washing their privates or wiping their asses. A standard workday was 16 hours, six days a week, and workers had been on the line since they turned thirteen. All they knew was labor, and the thought of one day being cared for as children offended them. However, as the years wore on and their bodies aged, Fire Lake loomed large since no one knew what it actually was. It could be Valhalla or Gehenna.
One worker, we’ll call him ‘Joe,’ decided he would find out. He had been on the line for fifteen years, and at age twenty-eight, Joe was the oldest man at Gratiot. He knew his time with the company was short, and Joe felt it would not be long before his robotic arms worked, but his non-automated back broke.
So, when the steam whistle blew, Joe climbed into the back of a transport he knew was headed to Fire Lake. It had taken him months to learn about the truck and its destination. Since Joe was a Gratiot veteran, he had some contacts in supply chain management with whom he drank. He knew who held their liquor and who did not, and eventually, Joe got the information what he wanted.
He hid deep in the transport bed and bedded down on a palette of something so wrapped in plastic he could not tell what it was. Joe had no idea how long the trip would take. All he knew was that he was not coming back.
Joe was on his way to Fire Lake.
On the north side of town was a foundry none of the Gratiot workers had heard about. It took the transport only twenty minutes to get there. Joe, who had closed his eyes expecting a good nap and a long ride, was shocked when the back doors swung open and the truck bed lifted up before angling downward at about forty-five degrees.
As a terrific heat and a blinding light filled the transport bed, Joe realized he had in fact reached Fire Lake. It was bliss.
by submission | Mar 11, 2023 | Story |
Author: Mahaila Smith
The casting call was very specific. No bodymods, no one over 6 ft. No medical conditions.
She taped her audition in an office tech supply store in front of a tall, tubular black camera-droid. She introduced herself, Jordan Wreath, age 24, from Greater Toronto region 4. She turned around and turned back. She stepped closer and held up her hands, showing both sides. She stepped even closer and bared her teeth. The tape compressed and she typed the username of the production company into the keypad at the front of the droid. She accepted the charge to send and felt the credit chip in her thumb heat up against the payment sensor. An animation of an eye winking on the machine’s small screen let her know that the tape had been sent.
She had forgotten about the audition a year later when a spherical drone arrived. She learned she had been accepted. The drone’s camera lens dilated, cataloging her reaction and broadcasting it to millions of eyes. This sphere would begin following her, now.
She packed quickly. Stowing essential clothes, toiletries, and her pillow. She hoped she would be able to sleep.
She took a bullet train to the address the company had sent to her GPS app.
She arrived at the film company’s skyscraper. She followed a hospitality droid from the lobby to a boardroom where she met with the show’s writer. Unlike the actors in the show, he had received many body modifications. Brightly coloured freckles dotted his nose and copper spurs protruded between his dark curls. He was uncomfortably touchy.
The company put her up in a fancy, downtown hotel, where she would stay for six months. Every day she went to the lab and the spherical camera followed her. She learned to sprout the embryonic packages that would speed-grow potatoes and pumpkins, beans, and corn. Enough to sustain them for three months. She practiced attaching medi-patch implants on pieces of surrogate flesh.
She had not met any of her co-contestants. When she tried to watch promo footage, her sight clouded over. Her cortical implant had been overridden so as not to let her see any of the contestants, the spacecraft, or their destination. She heard the script. 13 Young, Hot, Singles Battle to survive and terraform a new Earth in 90 days. With One Condition. Contestants MUST become romantically involved with another contestant before the cycle is up. Every couple of weeks a pod would arrive to take away anyone who wasn’t coupled up, and brought replacement contestants to the settlement. Jordan was never certain what the purpose was. Maybe it was to inspire the watchers to settle on the freshly terraformed land.
The day before their rocket was scheduled to launch, Jordan felt intensely anxious.
She did not drink. And she did not know anyone who lived downtown. She found a small pub near her hotel. She stepped up to the bar and ordered a rye and citrus. She sat down on the body-conforming barstool. She looked around the bar and saw couples with entwining their fingers or tentacles or vines. An older masc sat with an automated companion.
She saw a cloudy figure step through the door. Her forehead pulsed and ached. The figure walked to the bar and ordered a drink. She couldn’t hear what they said, but she saw the bartender place a rocks glass of lime green liquid with a blue-crystal rim on the bar in front of them. The figure sat, leaning close to her and she felt them take her hand.
by submission | Mar 10, 2023 | Story |
Author: Helena Pantsis
I learnt in the moments I stole when I was sixteen that time piled up, folded in and on top of itself like leaves of an endless, unwilting cabbage. I took seconds from my father, gathering them like crumbs of toast on the plastic table cloth, and minutes from the mailman, who missed our house three times a week anyway.
It was only when hours turned to days and weeks to months and years to decades did my mother noticed that the lines on my face seemed to challenge hers, and the thinning of my hair left me cold and frail.
They took me to doctors against my will, begging for tests to be done, for something to be explained, and diagnosed me with somethings that no one could. I told my parents and the doctors that I wasn’t ill, that I’d simply done it to myself. Still, no one believed me. But I didn’t need them to, I could feel the pounding feet of Time on their way out.
When Time finally visited me alone in my bedroom, at seventeen years old with the body of an eighty-year-old, they looked me over, picking apart the pieces of me I’d let grow loose and grey.
“What are you doing?” Time asked.
By then my gums were raw and dry, and I had to lift my finger, slow and arthritic, to bring them closer in. Time leaned forward, ears piqued.
“Robbing you,” I whispered, harsh and slow.
Swiftly then, I threw my arms around their neck, weighing them down on top of me. Time struggled, arms flailing and pushing back, sinking into me, melting into the waning colour of my sunken chest.
The next morning when my mother came in to check on me, she could barely fathom it. There I was, in the body of a seventeen-year-old, holding the hands of a clock in my own sleeping hands.
They could never explain my miraculous recovery, nor the youthful faces of my parents, nor the way my family lived and lived and lived.
