by submission | Apr 5, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The fire was burning low. Overhead the stars were a mighty river. Shrieks and howls threatened from the darkness beyond. The clan huddled nearer the flames seeking primitive protection. Talismans hung around their necks. Glittering things. Useless things.
The hunt had not gone well today. Nothing to cook on the fire. Nothing to feed their shrinking bellies. It had not always been like this. The clan had once prospered. Then, the clan had not feared the night. They had welcomed it. Reveled in their strength. Their dominion.
The clan couldn’t understand what had happened. How had they fallen so very low.
One clansman sat a bit apart from the others. He fingered the talisman around his neck as he mulled the clan’s plight. Their fall. He had once been their chief, directing many of his clansfolk. Building their greatness. Their prosperity. Their dominion.
But he had lost face. The clan blamed him. They said he should have foreseen their downfall. He’d been a chief. He claimed to know things. To know the world. How to keep their dominion. He should’ve known.
And he had known. And he was to blame. He’d studied the world. Knew its deepest mysteries. Its initial conditions.
Upon this understanding of initial conditions, he claimed the right to lead. In the chaos that was life, only a chief sensitive to initial conditions could map a path of dominion with certainty. That is what he’d done.
And it had worked. Prosperity. Dominion. Certainty.
Still, the fall had come. Battle. Fire. Famine. Plague.
It troubled the once-chief and his sensitivity to initial conditions. His clansfolk said he’d misled them. Had not spoken truth. But that was the initial condition: truth. He had always told his truth. His vision. He had led them there. Here.
One of his clansfolk yelled for him to feed the fire. That was his task now. To keep the fire burning. To keep the threats of night away.
When he’d been chief there was almost no night. The cities, the streets, every corner of the land glowed with their dominion. Until it went dark. As it had to. Because the once-chief was wrong. Had always been. The initial condition he’d built the clan’s dominion on was not truth. Otherwise this darkness would not have come.
The once-chief clasped his talisman of shiny fobs, offered a prayer to his silicon gods, and darted into the darkness for fuel to stoke the fire.
A few minutes later he returned, grimy and winded, carrying a heavy load. His clansfolk made room for him. He heaved the tires from the autonomous vehicle onto the ones that had burned low in sizzling toxicity. Thick, acrid smoke belched as the new tires flared and sputtered.
His clansfolk pushed him back from the miasmic light and heat. But the once-chief leaned into the choking smoke obscuring the stars. He watched as ragged moths, strange attractors, flocked to the sickly light, until they dropped from the crippling smoke, their wings beating erratically, each dying beat influencing unseen currents of air, somehow creating ripples that could change the course of history somewhere in the universe.
But not here, the once-chief thought.
For he knew the initial condition of this world was not truth. It was greed.
by submission | Apr 4, 2023 | Story |
Author: Sarah Klein
Paul put on some jazz music as he set up the Webcam. He was pumped. After weeks of boredom, the Doppelganger program had launched. It was a steep fee to be included, but they were essentially cloning you, with some proprietary software that was supposed to mimic your brain too. Plus, he and his friends were too wealthy for it to even be a second thought. The first week had been great, and it was his turn to host. He shimmied his hips to the music as he set out the cheese plate.
The doorbell rang. It was Cindy. “Hey baby!” He said, giving her a peck on the cheek, and running his hand down her tight red dress. She giggled. “Beer’s in the fridge, wine is on the counter, I’m just setting up the hors d’oeuvres.” He ran back into the kitchen while Cindy settled herself on the couch.
A minute later the door went again, and Cindy yelled “I got it!” Mike, Steve and Jenna piled in together raucously. After some hubbub, they finally all sat down, and Paul hit “Launch” on the program.
“This wine is fantastic,” Steve said, and Jenna made a noise to agree, her mouth full of crackers. They all took turns holding their thumbs to the biometric scanner and sat back to watch.
They were all at a big party, with a bunch of other doppelgangers. They took turns zooming in on each other and eagerly gossiped. “Wow, Jenna, your boss really does not want to leave you alone,” Mike observed. Jenna put her head in her hands. “God, I know! I put in my two weeks, Steve and I have more than enough so it’s fine, but what a creep!” Steve put his arm around her.
“Ooh, Steve and Cindy are going off somewhere together,” Paul crooned. Internally, though, his guts twisted. Cindy giggled and sipped her wine. They all craned their heads in and Mike hit commands to zoom and follow them.
The jeering continued as the couple entered the spare room. But silence struck abruptly as the Cindy and Steve doppelgangers began to passionately kiss. Paul coughed and tried to steady himself. The doppelgangers started to undress each other. They watched, rapt, until Steve went to caress Cindy’s naked body, and Paul yanked the webcam out of the computer. He looked up at Cindy. Her face was bright red. He looked over at Steve, who looked pale and uncomfortable.
“What the fuck,” Paul said. It came out too loud.
“We were watching that,” said Mike, but he was ignored.
Steve looked at Paul and shrugged, holding his hands palms up. “I don’t know, man, it’s just like, dolls. I’m not touching your girl, man. Not me.” He jammed his thumb into his chest for emphasis.
“You want to,” Paul said, and looked over at Cindy, who was silent and still. “Cindy? I’m not enough for you, huh, babe?” Cindy began to sniffle, and held her hands to her face.
“Cut it out,” Jenna yelled. Paul shot back, “it’s based on US, dummies! The behavior is based on us!”
“Come on man,” Mike said evenly, “it’s probably crap software and like, human desire translates to it weird, or like, we all wanna fuck everybody.” But Paul wasn’t listening.
“You piece of shit,” he screamed, as he lunged for Steve’s throat. Cindy wailed. Mike and Jenna tried to restrain Paul.
The phone rang at the police department. “I swear to God, if this is some doppelganger shit again, I’m not sending a car. Fucking ridiculous,” the sergeant said, picking up the phone.
by Julian Miles | Apr 3, 2023 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s something glowing. Must be close. My vision flip-flops, greys out and back in, then snaps into focus.
I have a digital clock embedded in my forearm panel! It reads 00:01:19:36, the last pair is seconds, and they’re decreasing.
“Hello, Jarn.”
I roll onto my back. The voice in my ear isn’t from nearby in the car park. Not good.
“Listen carefully, Jarn.”
Like I have a choice?
“That timer shows how long you have before the modification we made to your battery turns your cyborg body into a hundred-kilo fragmentation bomb.”
And the rest of me into mince. Nice.
“We’ve blanked your comms, and I have overwatch on your vision, so let’s get down to business. In a fraction under an hour, Ethan Plamswythe will be opening the new CyberWatch facility in Duraton.”
I can only hear him in my right ear. I wonder? I close my right eye.
“Stop that. Reflexive moves I’ll allow. Anything else is out.”
I open it, then close my left eye.
“As I was saying: Ethan. New facility. You’re going to go and kill him. After you do that, I’ll shut down the modification, and you can explain it all to the police.”
Right after the Easter Bunny pops up and gives me a big kiss, I’m sure.
“I suggest you get a move on. Duraton is a good 40-minute drive away.”
No mention of my closed left eye. Which means there’s a rider on my right side, audio and visual only: it’s basic, and easy to implant. Likewise the timer is a straightforward swap of forearm cover plates. Battery tampering presents no challenge – I can change my pack in under a minute if I need to hurry. I’m guessing they swapped my custom cell for a smaller cell, giving room for their control package. After all, it’s not like I’m going to need extended battery life in their plan. The question is: how fancy is their unit? Ah. That’s an easy find.
“Hey, Mister Bomberman, you got wheels for me? My vehicle’s ex-service: still has anti-interference sensors.”
“Good to know you’re co-operating. Use one of the autohire vehicles by the exit stairs.”
Their modification is bottom of the range: a shielded cell would be impervious to sensors. Mister Bomberman is running a budget operation, and doesn’t seem to be aware of what I am. Wait a minute. He couldn’t be that cocky? I look about.
“The way out is on your left. You came from the right, remember?”
“I’m a little fuzzy on details. Somebody compressor pulsed me.”
There’s a chuckle.
“Had to put you down fast. Even stockers like you can be dangerous.”
I’m no stock trooper. My public ID says so, but a second level query would reveal it as a cover. You’re an amateur, Mister Bomberman.
I close my right eye and shout: “What did you do? I can’t see.”
“We did nothing. What are you trying to pull?”
“I’m trying to obey! Shutting down my vision doesn’t help.”
There’s whispered conversation, then I hear a van door slide open – both in my ear, and from my left! I sprint that way.
Leaping two cars, I slide across its roof, then slam the door shut. I unload some pent-up cyberviolence, leaving the van immobilised and them trapped inside.
Finally, I call for help. Then I pop the rigged battery and slide it under the van, before using my whole seventy kilos of non-cybered body to drag myself to a safe distance. Painful, but worth it.
“Better hope the police arrive before the timer runs out, Mister Bomberman.”
by submission | Apr 2, 2023 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Earth Two went missing. You’d think the reaction would have been shock and awe. It was more like “shucks” and “aaah.”
Generally, the Sol populace exhibited a collective disinterest. The exo-insurers decidedly did not, and I was called in. Planets did go missing. Usually, not ones as high profile as Earth Two, but when identifying and cataloging worlds on the close-to-curdling reaches of the Milky Way, funky stuff happened: supernovas, planetary collisions, gamma ray bursts, wave function collapses, accounting blunders.
As an interplanetary pencil pusher, I had to deal with the finer points of Earth Two being a corporate “rounding error.” When I dug into the case, it became crystal clear that someone had cleverly muddied the waters to make them appear deep. Major tomfoolery was afoot,
What I mean by that is Earth Two never seems to have existed at all. For over two centuries, some entity had inserted bogus interstellar surveying data into the galactic archive and somehow corrupted the cosmic ledger, backfilling the blockchain with convoluted legalities that read like the devil’s own End User Licensing Agreement.
A real cluster. Maybe not Virgo Supercluster-sized, but still a monumental mess to sort out. Luckily and literally, I had time on my side. The inside pocket of my jacket held a freejacked chrono-dowser. This was not strictly legal, but it was certainly efficient when tracking down anomalous activity far in the past, and my ever-tyrannical boss, Amalee La Terre, favored efficacy over ethics.
Through some closely guarded quantum divination, the device could hone in on inflection points in the past. In essence, the chrono-dowser could rewind time.
With a few critical caveats: Rewind Only–no spying into the future, only the past was in play. Read Only–no physically traveling back in time, only peeking into the past. Sheer Events Only–no retro-stalking or prurient pursuits, only past incidents severely rattling spacetime and creating massive branching in cosmic timelines were locatable.
But probably the most important thing to know about the chrono-dowser: it was unfailingly ironic.
Think I’m kidding?
Okay. Here’s where the Earth Two investigation led me: to the small town of Bend, Oregon, USA on March 7, 2019.
Why there and then?
On that day, Earth Two was both saved and doomed, because the last Blockbuster Video store in existence sold a very battered VCR tape of a way-below B-movie. A low budget clunker of a sci-fi flick about humanity screwing up our world and having to colonize a newly discovered exoplanet to survive.
The title: Earth Two.
A super forgettable film. Except to the kid that bought that old videotape. A kid who still used a VCR player. A kid who dreamed and eventually schemed cosmic things. A kid whose great great granddaughter became Amalee La Terre, the current presidium of Magellan Enterprises, the largest exoplanetary expediter in the galaxy. My boss.
In my jacket pocket, on my chrono-dowser, I had all the evidence I needed to expose the juiciest real estate scam in galactic history and lay low the biggest corporation in the cosmos.
So, why did I hesitate?
On that day of March 7, 2019 in that very last Blockbuster Video in Bend, Oregon, you should’ve seen the look on that kid’s face holding that ancient videotape with the lame title and cheesy sci-fi graphics. You should’ve seen that kid’s eyes light up with possibilities. It was like being at the very start of creation. A Big Bang moment. That kid held the future in his hands and in a very real sense did discover Earth Two.
Who was I to take that away from any of us?
Be kind. Sometimes, don’t rewind.
by submission | Apr 1, 2023 | Story |
Author: Jeremy Nathan Marks
“There is pain when functional activity is insufficient, but excessive activity produces the same effect.” -Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor In Society
Jerrold Davis Ph.D. (c) had a problem. He was such an astute student that he had assimilated the language of his discipline of sociology to the point that he no longer could speak in words and phrases of his own making.
Ever since Davis had begun his journey to become a professional sociologist, he had worked to master the language, the lingo of his field. He parroted the things his professors said, and he could recite, chapter and verse, the works of masters like Durkheim, Parsons, Weber, Marx, and more recent luminaries like Skocpol. Davis dazzled his professors by making his points in ways they would make. He was such a good student that he earned several A+ grades in his course work and passed his comprehensive exams (comps) with distinction. Everyone said Davis had a brilliant career ahead of him. All he needed to do was produce articles for publication in academic journals, and he would be assured a postdoctoral fellowship (a “post doc”). No one doubted that his dissertation would be brilliant.
But then something happened Davis could not explain. And when I say could not explain, he literally could not explain it.
One morning, two weeks after Davis defended his dissertation proposal, he woke up unable to speak. When a roommate asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee, Davis could not respond. He was mute. Davis had to nod vigorously so his roommate would hand him a cup. His entire morning was like this, having to pantomime his intentions. That is until he arrived at the Sociology Department where, much to his relief, he found he could again speak.
“Jerrold, here is a copy of your proposal with your advisor’s notes,” one of the secretaries told him.
“________________________________________. ________________________. _____, _________.” Davis replied.
“What?” the secretary asked.
“______________. ______,_____. _____! ___.”
She shook her head, unable to make sense of what Davis had said. In fact, he had been quoting from White Collar by C. Wright Mills. But since that work is copyright protected, I cannot repeat it here.
Davis left the main office and walked to the Teaching Assistant cubicles down the hall. Instead of asking himself why the secretary couldn’t understand him and settling on the answer that she didn’t know her Mills, he told himself, “_______________________. _____,________;_________;________________._____;_____________;________________;____________;__________,” which was a passage from Weber’s essay, “Bureaucracy.”
In the office, a peer congratulated Davis on the success of his dissertation proposal. Davis responded by quoting Marx on “each according to his ability” rather than simply saying, “Thank you.” The grad student shook his head and thought again that Davis “couldn’t ever turn it off.’”
By now, Davis was growing concerned. When he tried to ask a question of someone, even a simple question like, “Does anyone want coffee?” he would quote from an article on food deserts in major urban centers. Increasingly desperate, he tried to use dialogue from some of the pulp detective novels he read in his spare time. But it was impossible to do this. All Davis could do was speak in a sociological language.
To get through the day, Davis tried composing a note explaining that he had laryngitis and had lost his voice. But when he tried to write this on paper, he could not. Davis could not print the pronoun I. What he could do was reproduce a passage from Kevin White’s An Introduction to the Sociology of Health and Illness, 3rd edition. For the first time in his life, Davis could not speak up.
He shouted,“____________,_______________” from The Division of
Labor in Society by Durkheim. What he had meant to say was the word “shit,” but his voice would not allow it. No sociologist he had read had used that expletive in their writings.
Still, Davis had a reason for hope. He had just downloaded an AI App for his phone and asked it what he could do to speak to his colleagues. The App suggested using a speech-to-text device, but Davis had to tell the App this would not work because laryngitis had cost him his voice. The App said he should see a doctor, but if he lacked health insurance, he might consult a friend who could speak for him by reading messages that Davis wrote on a tablet. In disgust, Davis closed the App. He tried typing his thoughts into a text-to-speech program, but once again, he could only put down the words of others. Desperate, Davis decided the only option left was to see his dissertation advisor and somehow get him to say things that Davis could repeat. If he could get the man to say, “I have lost my voice. Please provide guesses as to what my needs are from my body language,” then Davis might be able to have someone assist him with his condition. But when he went to his advisor’s office, it was vacant even though his advisor was supposed to be there for office hours. Davis sat and waited in vain all afternoon.
On his way home, a mugger accosted Davis. The man pulled a knife and demanded his wallet. Davis had left home with nothing but his keys and some loose change but could not explain this to the mugger. He did not bother trying to speak. The only thing Davis could do was turn out his pockets to show his poverty. But when he reached into them, the mugger assumed he was going for a weapon, so he stabbed him.
Davis fell to the sidewalk, bleeding from his stomach. The mugger searched him and, finding nothing, ran off. Davis tried calling out for help, but the only thing he could muster was, Au Secour! Au Secour! Because it had appeared in a French article on social determinants of health. But Davis did not live in a French-speaking neighborhood, so he lay on the pavement experiencing an increasing loss of consciousness for which he had no words.
by submission | Mar 31, 2023 | Story |
Author: Bryce Paradis
“Please hold still.”
Why am I here, in this machine? The dim tunnel enveloping me sings crazy, electric birdsong. It twangs like a guitar, screeches like a klaxon, hisses like radio static, and screeches again.
“We’re establishing your baseline. Please try to think of as little as possible.”
I think of nothing except thinking about nothing, which will have to be good enough.
“Okay, now we need you to focus on a poorly performing memory. Something that doesn’t come easy. Anything that feels confusing or hard to grasp.”
When I was a child, I had a church dress that I hated wearing. On my wedding day, I wore a strapless dress that my mother disapproved of. I married Derrek, whom she didn’t approve of, either. We have two daughters. Their names are … The eldest … She’s twenty-five? Is she married, or is that me in the strapless dress? She must be married, I’ve seen her with her husband. She has gray hairs now, little strands of silver amid the auburn. Only, it’s 2055 … We just celebrated our twelfth anniversary. None of this should be possible.
“We’re building the bridge now.”
Precious light blooms inside my head, warming my body and illuminating the world. The year is 2091. My daughters are Melody and Amelia. They are fifty-two and forty-nine years old. Melody has the most beautiful grandchildren, two boys and a girl. Little Skyler is already in high school, and he’s so tall! Amelia’s paintings, oh … Suns rising out of oceans, white-spotted deer in the trees. And Derrek is here! He’s in the other room. They got him to come!
The machine twangs. It screeches.
“Good job, Alice. We got a nice map. We’re going to try a different bridge now.”
…
I’m in a tunnel, why are they saying it’s a bridge? My hands are cold. Why are there such terrible sounds? Humming and squawking … An electric bird? A snapping guitar? Why am I alone? Where’s Derrek? I want to see my mother. Why did they take me away from my mother?
The light blooms inside my head. My hands warm. I take a deep, calming breath.
“How’s that, Alice?”
“Very good, thank you.”
This rickety brain of mine, it’s done me wrong. Too many poisoned neurons, too many dead wires and frayed connections. It’s been so long now, more than half my life. Everyone has worked so hard to get me here, inside this tunnel, inside this MRI that can talk to nanomachines. It’s such a wild gamble, such a desperate attempt, and so expensive! Then again, Derrek’s paying with his money, so that’s fair. If you don’t stay, the least you can do is pay.
Maybe that’s too harsh. I wasn’t entirely there, either.
“This all looks very promising, Alice. We’re taking you down to baseline.”
The light fades. I’m cold.
These terrible sounds … like a klaxon, like a bird gone mad …
Why am I here, trapped in this machine?
