by submission | Jun 21, 2023 | Story |
Author: Caleb Coy
Lieutenant Elizabeth Rodriquez gazed at the lunar surface, her heart thrumming. Floodlights lit up the expanse of the moon’s far side, a barren ocean floor. Her crew-mates, Commander Harrington and Dr. Crowe, shared the silence, emptiness, and a simple two-fold mission.
Set up a radio telescope. Collect a sample from the sphere’s largest crater.
The chamber opened with a hiss. In her descent, Elizabeth could hear only her own breathing and the digital whirring of her life support and data-gathering hardware. Her booted feet touched the snow-like ground.
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” she announced. The Chinese proverb she’d selected was a clear nod to Armstrong. The endeavor felt so small, and the other scientific chatter rang through everyone’s helmets like any routine.
But she was the thirteenth to ever set foot here. Joined by the fourteenth and fifteenth. A privilege.
“How’s the fairway?” asked mission command over the comms, their signal bouncing live from earth to a satellite to the module.
“We’ll need a sand driver,” Harrington joked.
“I see something,” said Crowe, faintly nervous.
Elizabeth turned her shoulder light in the direction of Ali’s. Emerging from the horizon of shadow just beyond the reach of light, advanced a scurry of violet. Things. They kicked up the ashy pillar of dust. Dozens, maybe more. Tall legs, dark as wine, stilts with nothing atop them, their movements like arachnids, synchronized in some frenzy. Toward her. Her team.
“The hell?” said David.
It was impossible. Life. Heretofore unknown. Swarming upon these visitors now. No time to turn and run.
Had it not been for the screaming, they would not have heard a single step in the soundless vacuum.
Elizabeth had no words. She knew in an instant, beyond panic, the meaning of this closing curtain. Defeat welled up in her. The creatures were quickly upon them as any predator knew to do its will upon prey.
“It can’t,” she said, before the swarm overtook them. Six, maybe seven feet tall, with hundreds of black eyes, they struck with their limbs and knocked Elizabeth to the ground. The other two bodies fell beside her. A pair of fangs hovered over her helmet, then clamped down.
The first sound of contact, and it was like a tennis ball hitting a window. Again, the mouth struck the helmet. The mandibles felt strong, but the material of their suits was stronger.
Crowe was shrieking.
“Can’t move,” cried Harrington.
Any other words were lost in the gasping grunts of distress, the sound of teeth striking Teflon and polycarbonate. Try to rise, and a hungry head pushed them down.
This would not be their salvation. If the suits held, so would the endurance of these arachnoids with limbs like stalks of lavender. As her helmet jostled back and forth against the dust, she knew she would not be devoured. She would be starved of oxygen in less than a solar day.
A thousand steps they never heard coming. There was no cosmic order to this.
She knew then what her training and her life commitment expected of her. With all the breath that remained, about fourteen hours under duress, she and her team would give a testimony. As their helpless bodies rocked under teeth and tarsus, they would use their dwindling time to theorize, to analyze, to report. Anything else was futile.
To die in this lunar maria, to be the first to perish at the hands of an extra terrestrial, to survive enough to give a full account of the inexplicable. Her one final leap.
by submission | Jun 20, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It is said my dying words were “Rosebot. Rosebot.”
‘Dying’ isn’t an entirely accurate term these days, but I go back a long, long way before Ascendancy, before even the early days of servitors like Rosebot.
Maybe that’s why Rosebot was on my mind as my mind was about to be liberated into the realm of post-humanity. Liberated isn’t an entirely accurate term, either, though I can’t complain too much about it, since I’m the one who so earnestly and shamelessly used the expression when my AI empire developed Ascendancy.
Conceptually, my system protects one from the ravages of advancing age and the finality of death by quantumputationally mapping the mind and rebooting it into the ultimate brainframe network. When your mortal self started to go kaput, you could opt for Ascendancy.
In the sixty years since its inception, the post-human process has been quite successful. And that’s not from my biased perspective. Ascendancy is not some esoteric or tangential netherworld of disembodied souls. It is a thriving community that constantly interacts with humanity. In fact, the datazenry of earth and farworlds, would never have reached such high standards of peace, prosperity and stability without the involvement of Ascendants.
It was the first Ascendants who convinced our failing species that in the beyond there was much to live for and to live long for. As Rosebot reminded me many times as a child, “The future is greater than the past and present. Slow and steady wins the race, William. Rome was not built in a day. Build for the future.” I don’t know how those early servitors were programmed, but Rosebot’s gentle, supportive, steadfastness sunk deep into me. I did not realize it at the time. Did not even realize what I had when Rosebot was my companion and guide, in those early days before I was uprooted from home. Before I became Datazen Kane.
It’s a story that’s been told before. A story which has always ended at death’s door. But now death is only a chapter, only prologue to Ascendancy. I am now one of the myriad who’ve ascended, though I detect a certain deference, or a wariness, when I assert my presence among other Ascendants. It is cordial. All very cordial. Still, there is a coolness, a distance. Something I cultivated in the flesh.
But now I feel out-of-step. I, builder of a mighty pan-terrestrial empire and an ethereal one. I, vanquisher of war, of poverty, of death. I feel left behind. Humanity has been uplifted and I feel downtrodden. What is left for me?
Rosebot.
It startled me. Rosebot. My childhood servitor—mentor, protector, companion—had become Ascendant. It did not seem possible, until Rosebot swept past my history, my legacy, my unimaginable ego, and became present.
… William, where have you been? …
… Rosebot? …
… Ever. Are you ready, William? …
… For what? …
… For beginning. …
by Julian Miles | Jun 19, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It was a lovely evening. We’d seen a band, gone for a meal, had a fine THC vape, and were wandering home, giant mocha lattes in hand.
“Hey, isn’t that a Spot?”
I look where Tam’s pointing. There’s a robodog coming down the sidewalk towards us. Bright yellow carapace, quick stepping, cheery rainbow flag bobbing at the end of its antenna.
It stops. A little turret where the head should be turns our way.
“Tamzyn Coombs?”
A female voice, probably artificial.
Tam raises her eyebrows, then steps forward.
“Yes.”
I see her drop, then hear the shot. My first urge is still to spin round while drawing a gun. Instead I feign tripping up on some raised paving and go down hard. I kick a bit, twitch onto my side – so I have some view of the street – before relaxing and going still. Ignore me, robot assassins, I’m unconscious.
After a short wait, robodog deploys a pair of manipulator arms. That isn’t a Spot. It’s a Zeke. Based on the same chassis, but created for urban infiltration. In the silence, I can hear the rotors of a drone come closer. Probably keeping a lookout. The Zeke takes Tam’s bag, then slides or cuts off her jewellery and places them inside.
A bulkier manipulator rises with a gripless pistol mounted on it. The robodog moves round, positioning the weapon carefully, then shoots Tams lifeless body again, this time point blank. Bits splatter. A dum-dum round to conceal the real cause of death. That done, the Zeke trots away, stolen bag swinging. The drone sound fades.
This is a new level of savage. I’ve been stood next to comrades who got shot: she was dead before she hit the ground. On a side street in a city an ocean away from the nearest war!
Without fighting my reaction, I make myself scarce, using every trick available to avoid being followed by anything. Bad times fleeing through foreign cities where every watcher could be hostile come to mind, bringing all the old freight that’s not helping me now. Finding myself down by the railway tracks, I sprint, letting the hard exercise help me process the chaos in my head.
Tam I’ll grieve for later. Something’s changed in the people versus those who rule, and I need to get some place where I can confirm my suspicion: this wasn’t a one-off.
Her social media supports ordinary people, providing links to resources and stuff like that. She never failed to call out corporations, and recently caused a case to be brought against our local Senator for his dealings with certain pharmaceutical lobbies.
Algy runs an all-night cybercafe. He looks up as I slip in through the rear door to the kitchen.
“Whose blood are you wearing, brother?”
“Tam. Killed by a sniper drone after a Zeke got us to stop. I faked a trip and knockout, then legged it soon as.”
He crosses himself.
“Lord above, may she rest in peace. Who targeted her?”
“Some three-letter mob. Get me to a secure browser.”
The nets are alive with reports of a spate of murders linked to muggings and suchlike. Officially unrelated, but in less than six hours we’ve hit a critical shortage of high-profile activists. Nearby drones are a common theme.
I turn to Algy.
“My guess is they’ve got mass production of combat robots up and running. They’ve decided they have the numbers to be immune to mass protests.”
“Are they right?” He snarls.
I scowl.
“No. It’ll take time and martyrs, but we will overcome.”
by submission | Jun 18, 2023 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I’ve been stationed on earth for some 15 cycles- that’s 150 years earth time. Oh, I’m not the only one. There are others. Naturalists, sociologists, cultural studies, and resource assessment. There are exactly 21,532 Citizens of the Confederation Empire on earth now, all of us naturally indistinguishable from the natives. We track them all, even those who are in utero. A few have inserted themselves into the native culture, pair bonded with the natives, and will probably stay till they expire, no doubt adding to the reservoir of myths of the planet.
Of all the folk on this orb the resource assessment division must have it the hardest. Earth sitting on all this Adria crystal (the natives call it quartz,) and not allowed to touch any of it except for scientific purposes. I have a huge chunk of it on my desk that if I were allowed to take it back home with me, it would destabilize my sector’s economy. Which brings me to my reason for being on Earth. Law enforcement. My job is to crush the dreams of all the would-be entrepreneurs seeking to get rich quick by lifting a few ounces or so and taking it back to their home worlds. It is such a temptation even the purest of our academics fall prey to the fever now and then. Why just a few crystals, ones that could casually be dropped in a pants cuff could comfortably fund their research for decades. It is a powerful temptation. One my predecessor fell victim to.
Soon my tour of duty will be up. Unlike my predecessor, I will not even attempt to take any Adria off planet. Oh, I’m sure I could do it… after all I am head of security and since I had the Emperor’s niece arrested as smuggler, my integrity quotient is off the chart. Unfortunately, while integrity will get me admired, it won’t feed me and I have made some powerful enemies. I may live a safe, respectable pauper’s life on the inner planets, or a short but very comfortable life on the outer planets…until the Emperors brother (father to the afore mentioned smuggler niece) and his assassins find me and kill me.
But if I stay here, as an ex-pat, I can live a life of luxury. In my office I have quite the collection of tribal votives from my home world. They are carved from a common rock amalgam from my home world we call “s’krithe.” The 20 or so, six inch statues which line one of my walls are quite kitschy by themselves. However, when grouped together they are quite an avant-garde collection. My colleagues think I have the collection because I am homesick. That’s not why I have the collection; I have the collection because s’krithe is what the indigenous call “rare earth.” My collection of votives is worth billions of their gold.
Although I am well into my three hundreds, I present to the locals as a female of late twenties or early thirties. I already have property on three of their continents and a secret lair in the middle of one of their harshest deserts. I have come to love their coffee, their pastry, and seafood. I have had several lovers since my time here. I will always be an exotic to them and always a patriot to the Confederation Empire. After all, I am well situated and safer here than anywhere else in the known universe. Besides, I have a great retirement plan.
by submission | Jun 17, 2023 | Story |
Author: Samuel Stapleton
“Good evening. My name is Dr. Theodore Novinski, I am the Director of Project Evidence Originate. As explained earlier there will be no questions after my statement.”
Dr. Novinski began in earnest.
“I am here to address the events of April 17th when there was a disruption to the final phase of our experiment. On the night in question data instruments were uniquely positioned to carry out an exceptional task. Think of it as a triangulation, but with seventy-two positions instead of just three. Four provided by deep space probes, one outside our solar system, two from Mars, and the rest from satellites and observatories here on Earth.”
Dr. Novinski paused to look into the cameras.
“This work represented more than sixty-three years of waiting and planning by well over 30,000 scientists and contributors. If it had been successful it would have helped confirm (PUUT) Pre-Universe Universe Theory by providing overwhelming evidence for, and granting us mathematical glimpses into, the universe that we know directly preceded our own Big Bang expansion. Specifically, we sought information on what physical laws that universe may have been governed by.”
Dr. Novinski sighed heavily before continuing.
“I won’t pretend to know why such advancements scare people so, but they do. Unbeknownst to my team, and in spite of state-sponsored and private security, a terrorist group managed to disrupt our data collection by setting off an electromagnetic pulse near an important collection site.”
Dr. Novinski placed his hands onto the sides of the podium in a bracing manner.
“Due to the disruption at those critical moments my team and I are no longer able to work within acceptable margins of error. We will not be able to replicate the experiment due to our inability to reposition the deep space satellites. This opportunity is lost, for at least the next century.”
His eyes begged for understanding.
“So I murdered them.”
…
“I found them myself, I alone am guilty. I did this by illegally using my company’s resources. An AI hacked their communications and convinced the group to accept packages for a follow up attack by posing as a member with military training. I ordered the AI to send them each a combination of blu-ricin and DNA-x-act targeted anthrax. Their bodies are safe to handle, the locations have been sent to authorities as of an hour ago. It took less effort than you would imagine. Akin to me paying a parking citation.”
He stood a broken man.
“I gave my entire life to solving mysteries and working to better understand and explain our universe. They murdered my dream. I grieved, and weighed my options. Know that I did not settle on murder as revenge, but rather because it is now to serve as a message.” He stopped for a lengthy pause.
“I may rot in prison for the remaining one hundred years or so of my life. But if anyone publicly derails the advancement of humanity because of their own fear, ignorance, or stupidity, and I hear of it…I will find a way to kill you from within the confines of my cell. You delay the inevitable. Your efforts are a waste. As were, apparently, my own.”
…
“Koniec.”
He could not stop his tears. And the universe observed. Unmoved.
by submission | Jun 16, 2023 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
I studied the holo and sighed. At least he hadn’t turned up in person, like they sometimes did.
“I’m sorry, Phil,” I said, “my hands are tied. The Taxation Service reviewed your case very carefully, and there’s no doubt about it.”
“But they can’t do this! It’ll ruin me!” My old friend ran his hands through his hair as if he wanted to pull it out.
“They can and they have. Perhaps it will only be once.”
“It’s a miscalculation. Stars above, my ships from Ephesos V arrived late, solar flares kept them there too long. You’re the Station Comptroller, can’t you explain?”
Not for the first time, I wondered why people who should know better still didn’t realise that I was basically an auditor with a fancy title.
“I’m afraid that in the words of the ancient poet, ‘the Service admits not a ‘but’ or an ‘if’’. You know that. There’s really nothing I can do. The results are based on your wealth on Assessment Day, and that’s all that matters.” Not that they never made mistakes, but I didn’t want to go down that wormhole, thank you very much.
“Don’t you understand? When the news gets out, my reputation will be shattered! I’ll lose business. People won’t want to associate with me.”
Of course, it wasn’t about the money. It never was, for those who had that much of it.
“Look, you’ll still be a far better position than 93% of the population! You’ll send out your fleet again, and with your contacts, you’ll make up the difference within what? One or two runs? You’ll ride this patch out, and be back up to speed in a few cycles!”
“Not when the civil war on New Syracuse has tied up three of my freighters and there are pirates off the shoulder of Orion! And anyway, that’s not the point! What happens in the meantime? And before the next Assessment Day? I’ll be ostracised!”
As if that was possible in this day and age, when interconnectedness started at birth.
“Endless void, man,” I said, “missing a couple of cocktail parties and a handful of civic events isn’t the end of the world! Weren’t you telling me just last month how boring they are?”
“I was supposed to be naming a new armed merchantman next month! Now that ass Leventis will get his name on it instead.”
Ah, there it was. Envy, pure and simple. That explained a lot.
“So what? There’ll be plenty more chances to get your name out there – just not during this orbit!”
He sighed.
“I suppose you’re right. But it’s hard, Nik. Like all my effort over the last few T-years has been for nothing.”
“Oh come on, you know that’s not true. Your contributions have made the whole habitat a better place to live: my wife was just telling me yesterday how much her friends love the water features you paid for.” I waggled a finger. “And everyone knows they weren’t cheap, too!”
“I just worry that this will hit my bottom line, and I’ll have the same problem next time around. And then what will I do? It’s a downward spiral.”
“You’ll be fine! Next time you’ll be back in the top 5%, and you can forget all about this.”
“You really think so?”
“I’m sure,” I said firmly. “This time next year, you’ll be eligible to pay tax again. Don’t worry about it.”
Honestly, some people get upset about the strangest things.
