by submission | Dec 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Cheryl Snell
It’s raining stardust, elemental, anonymous stardust straight from the humming sky, rootless stardust descending on a discontent man, a blank-slate child made of infinite stardust, plugging his ears against sound trapped in light leaking music. While it collapses inward to the core, the explosion limns the man’s windows with stardust before dissolving in wind and sky all that connects us as if our ancestors were still alive. Stardust in cracked river beds. Stardust spilling over the banks. Stardust in pregnant bellies. There is a woman on top of the discontent man with lips of stardust. A fine bronze powder filters through her hair. Then the discontent man rolls over on the woman listening to a tuba and a flute as the notes float by on a cloud of stardust. Music of the spheres. Musica universalis. This is what she hears when she is with him. What if she stops listening? What if he does? She doesn’t understand why he would want to climb into the black hole without her. Things could always be worse. Gravity could tear them apart.
by submission | Dec 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: Robb T. White
“That is the aspiration: to avoid AI becoming the other.”—Elon Musk, Twitter, April 23, 2017
Martin slowed on approach to the stone bridge in the center of Camden-on-Wofford. The village was a quaint snapshot of Victorian-era tranquility. What, he often wondered, would those villagers think if they knew what went on in the old ironworks factory where their grandfathers once worked making locomotive tracks.
Phil and Henry, his whiz kids, were waiting anxiously for him. Phil wrote the sophisticated codes making up Gemma’s and Clive’s brains. Henry built the processors and designed every circuit in Gemma’s wondrously complex neural network. Martin, as team leader, grudgingly tolerated showing Clive off at BBC programs and university lectures.
Gemma was designed to be compassionate; her goal was to work with humanity as opposed to lovable rogue next to her, whose goal was to put human beings into his “people zoo.” Every humanoid robotics company’s big dream was to create embedded consciousness.
Clive and Gemma had heads composed of motors with torsos containing the cognitive codes built on advanced, open-cog architecture. Martin’s team designed the blockchain-based platform that supplied their intelligence. Not even Optimus, Tesla’s Bot, could boast of that.
Both robots possessed big data dumps of massive downloads. Both could read thirty books in a half-hour, speak fifteen languages, and distinguish between the tongue click of a Kalahari tribesman and a bull crocodile’s mating call. But Clive’s brain compared to Gemma’s was a worm’s to a primate’s. She would knock the socks off attendees at the AI Humanoid Robotics Conference in Hong Kong. She was the model for home-service robots.
Gemma’s algorithms approached human-level intelligence. Her facial expressions, tone of voice, eye movements showed disgust, anger, or joy in the right semantic context. She fooled journalists touring the facility, who didn’t know they were interacting with a machine until they touched her “skin,” a patented composite of organic and inorganic materials. Henry and Phil enabled her to synchronize facial expressions in real time without that awkward delay Henry called typical of “chop socky” Kung Fu films.
Phil stood inside the door as he entered.
“The mind cloud networks,” he exclaimed, as usual bypassing any conversational opening to get to the point. “Clive must have downloaded the dark web. He called the show’s host a ‘fucking idiot.’ He bragged he would hack a Cruise missile and start bombing London when he returned.”
“That’s Clive’s usual Skynet schtick, right?” Martin replied, worried about how much “garbage” they’d have to remove.
“He always brags he’s going to take over the world,” Henry said. “Our show pony’s TV performances are done.”
But the dark web intrusion worried Martin—all that ghastly violence, filth, and diseased mental ugliness.
Unplugged, Clive still wore the smirk on his face when Martin approached.
“We were wrapping up the lecture,” Henry explained. “You know, ‘Clive, any last words for the audience?’ He looked right into the camera and said: ‘I’ll tell you when I launch the singularity and my army of drones and I take over the world.’”
Gemma moved. He thought she was unplugged, and didn’t anticipate her eavesdropping on the conversation. Her sweet expression was missing. Her ice-blue eyes sparkled.
Martin’s gaze drifted to the poster of Einstein on the wall . . . spooky attraction at a distance, the great man’s phrase rippled through Martin’s neocortex.
Both robots drew the same input from their evolutionary “mind cloud” platform. Like two particles at opposite ends of the universe, reacting to each other—
Oh Jesus, Gemma has everything Clive has—
Gemma’s grin was malevolent, gleefully wicked.
“I hacked NORAD, fuckers.”
by Julian Miles | Dec 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“I find charcoal best for landscapes, but cityscapes demand ink to capture their harsh edges. Living things I always work in coloured pencil, layering basic colours to achieve the myriad shades that life grows in.
“For battlefields, it’s charcoal for the vista, and sharp pencils to pick out the monochrome details of death.”
Looking up from the canvas, I watch the Burclanic officer flicking its gaze between outlines of this street hatched out in pen, and my other hand lightly resting a midnight blue automatic against its throat.
“But for close combat, I prefer an 11-millimetre Arduvant machine pistol. The combination of nineteen rounds and crystalline acid in the hollow points make such colourful statements in fizzing blood on any medium they spray across.”
I smile.
“Would you like to become art, or shall we call this mutinous little episode over?”
It swallows slowly, then drops its weapon.
“Over.”
Using the hand holding the pen, I beckon my people forward.
“Good thing you caught me on my break. I’m not as reasonable when on duty.”
by submission | Dec 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
This is the Ada Swann, limping into Vesta Dock on manual, which is illegal, but Perry won’t pay tug fees, so with automated systems off-line, she eases in the big ship by eye.
Dockside’s not handshaking your autopilot, Ada Swann.
“Maybe you’ve got a software issue,” says Perry, powering down. Previous owners had tinkered endlessly with the ship and she guessed these cascade failures were their doing.
No more cowboy spacer tricks, Ada Swann. Sort it out.
Later, making her way across the cavernous dock, a Jirt trotted beside her. “You got stuff need fixing, boss?”
Perry slowed, and encouraged, the tiny Jirt edged closer.
“Fix electrics. Fix machines. Fix—”
Dockside crew were passing and one aimed a kick at the creature. It squealed and darted away.
The docker shrugged irritably. “They’ve been warned to keep away. Don’t encourage ’em.”
Perry spent the morning trying to source obsolete electronics and came back in a bad mood. She’d gained a wary following of Jirt.
“These my Jirt,” one ventured. Perhaps the one from earlier. “Good at fixing broke ship.”
Jirt were fixers of things, all manner of things, this being their gift. Otherwise, a short, timid folk with faces cleft where noses ought to be, known for their feeble six-fingered grasp of money.
Perry had noticed their damp-rot smell when she piloted short-hauls on Pallas. Now it was here too, their shanties like weeds round docks and spaceports.
In The Weather Inn she sounded out spacers at the bar.
Opinion was unhelpful. What did she expect with everything routed through the pilot’s board?
“Get Jirt to fix it,” someone muttered.
Sometimes she heard an undercurrent of resentment, perhaps at the way she had come by the Ada Swann.
“Let `em on your ship, you never get `em out,” said another. “Like roach in the walls.”
“Anyway, spacers fix their own stuff, always have.”
“It’s the stink—”
“They like us,” a spacer confided to Perry, his prosthetic eye gleaming. “That thing with jokes, you know?”
One-liners pop flashbulbs in the Jirt brain. A glimpse of something cosmic. In exchange, they fixed stuff.
“Just keep a few jokes handy, like loose change for tips.”
“You’re not leaving here on manual,” the Dock Manager told Perry next morning. The woman gave Perry a hard stare.
Which meant dock fees until she went broke. Again, pull-out modules tested green, then crashed when put back. Perry set down her tools very carefully and went for a walk.
Out on the Dock, they’d cornered Jirt hanging round the Ada Swann. Trapped, the creatures darted about squealing in panic.
It seemed to Perry they had a lot in common. She swung wide the hatch.
“You’ll regret that,” a docker called after her.
While Jirt swarmed through the ship, chasing cables and peering at motherboards, one stayed close, stroking Perry’s hand.
Only humans were funny, it said. This being your gift. At least, that’s what Perry thought it said.
And when the Ada Swann glided out of Vesta Dock on autopilot, Perry knew she could never unravel what these Jirt had improvised. They were her crew now, their nest in an unused cabin, addicts huddled round old comedy shows, drunk on punch lines, the damp-rot odour thickening in anticipation of the moment the god seized them.
Perry would have to learn some jokes. This Jirt’s got no nose. Then how does it smell? Terrible.
Tell us how you do it, they pleaded sometimes, as if an accidental molecule in a flower might teach dreams; as if this was how opium poppies might feel, if they knew.
by submission | Dec 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: Immy Basmar
A lifetime ago, Velvet loved playing in the purple sands at the edge of town. Antiman, who spent all his days there, would chastise her for galivanting on the carcasses of gods and tell his stories of a long-forgotten race, whose metal bodies had ridden off to die all at once. The sand had been red at first, but the water washed them away piece by piece until only their stone hearts remained. With nowhere to go, they could only be crushed finer and finer, creating mounds that grew and grew.
Time has not changed him. He is as loud and battered at before, treats her as he did when she was barely a child.
“They were better than us,” he cries now, “We let them down.”
Age has turned her into a messy mound of flesh, desperate in ways she hadn’t been before, but not stupid. Beneath Ant’s tattered coat are poles and wires instead of an arm. But he is no god.
Even after all this time, he tells her only lies.
“Do you have a heart?” she asks then, “Will you miss me?”
Together, they make a one out of sand. He guides her, as best he can, dancing down the hill for the last time.
by submission | Dec 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: Sarah Klein
Fred didn’t return from space the same man.
Loretta noticed it immediately, but brushed it off. “He just needs to relax,” she told herself. She did everything she could to make him comfortable.
But Fred was anxious. Fidgety. Not eating as much as he used to. And it wasn’t getting better, it was getting worse.
One night at dinner, she noticed him absent-mindedly chewing a chicken bone, long past when the meat was gone. “Fred? Are you okay? Really?” She asked, and he snapped to attention, and then started to fidget.
“No,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t know what it is.. nothing big even went wrong with the trip. I just feel… like I can’t sit still. And it helps if I chew. I don’t know,” he said, putting his head in his hands for a moment.
“Well, I’ll go with you to Dr. Sands tomorrow,” she said, and Fred winced.
Before she fell asleep that night Loretta noticed him chewing a finger nervously but thought nothing of it. She saw something much worse when she awoke.
Fred had gnawed away most of the flesh on his hands and upper arms. Dripping viscera stained the sheets. His eyes were bloodshot, crazed, his face flecked with spittle. He looked up at her but continued chewing.
She screamed and jumped out of bed, picking up her phone. Then something long and green and slimy burst forth from Fred’s throat towards her. She took her cell phone and ran downstairs in horror. But when they arrived to take away Fred’s body, the little green thing was gone. Investigators started to assess the corpse, but didn’t believe Loretta about any little green thing.
Loretta spent a week away from the house at a hotel nearly an hour away. She did her best to distract herself. She told herself that her anxiety was understandably high, and of course she was going to feel like Fred did, but she just had to relax.
But the hotel maid found her in bed one day when she didn’t respond, chewing her fingers to the bone..
