by submission | Dec 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Arkapravo Bhaumik
FADE IN
(A newsroom setting with the reporter and the President seated face to face)
Reporter: Mr. President thank you for this interview.
President: (smiles, nods in an affirmation)
Reporter: Mr. President, as it has often been claimed by your critics, you are not a human being so you will never connect with human beings and their problems. How do you reply to that?
President: As a start, I AM a ‘People’s President’, my sex, voice, intonation, personality, and even my name were chosen by people over a nationwide poll. I very literary represent the country. As far as problems are concerned, I am guided by AMAX-R-67 database and the real-time response system – anything that even remotely goes into mild orange is immediately attended by my team and the other federal organizations, be it floods, arson, burglary, medical emergency, etc.
Reporter: When the McSullivan committee recommended for a robot as our President, most of their argument was based on two primary concerns – corporatization and corruption.
President: Allow me to summarize that, a robot-like me doesn’t need to have sex and I do not have a son-in-law who is a pain in the ass!
Reporter: … on the contrary you have a fabulous sense of humor!
President: (raises his eyebrows, smiles)
Reporter: 28th October, you were attacked and you lost a limb. You have always been evasive on the details. Any reasons for that.
President: It was a bomb and I lost a leg, it was put together by the next day and I was back to my peak performance in the following 96 hours. It surely discouraged the terrorist organization – a President who is unharmed by a bomb. Even if I would have blow-up in that incidence, all my information and experience is storied in the Ambinet-G servers and within a week I would be ‘alive and kicking’ so to say. Next question, please.
Reporter: McSullivan’s team was briefly considering keeping the President more as a computer than as an android capable of …
President: Now, what is the fun in that? … in a room and spitting out lines of codes.
Reporter: There maybe a woman robot president after you.
President: All I know, once my term is over, my memory will be wiped clean and I will be put in the mandatory two weeks of quarantine.
Reporter: You have built up a fan following, and your personality has attracted and appealed to people both from within the country and internationally.
President: They gave me a good neural-net and the rest has been the love of the people. (smiles)
Reporter: Political pundits have been speculating that politics may well become the sole domain of AI
President: Hmmm … I do not see any harm in it. We have long come off the killer robot syndrome where AIs were blatantly branded. I, President and a team to assist me seems to be working well.
Reporter: Any plans to be completed prior to the end of the term?
President: Since you asked, there are two in my mind. First, I have been a proponent of robot rights and we need social instruments and organizations to enable the co-existence of AI and biologicals. I have been trying to get the right legislature for this.
Reporter: … the second?
President: I wish to go to space, maybe the moon. I want to set the records as the first President in space. (laughs, tones it down)
Reporter: It has been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you for your time.
President: Likewise, and thank you.
FADE OUT
by submission | Dec 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Thang Danang balanced the hypodermic on the tip of her index finger.
Reckless. Irresponsible. Crazy.
That’s what her cousin Luc had called her. He’d yelled that her visions of their family ancestors weren’t real, that she was hallucinating.
Thang had pointed to her great grandmother Binh sitting in her finest silk near the gene editing equipment in her lab. “Ask her if I’m hallucinating.”
Throwing up his hands, but trying to dial down his tone, Luc once again tried to explain. “Thang, I think you’ve got melioidosis. It’s caused by the bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei. You’re a scientist. A very good scientist. Look it up. It’s a soil bacteria found here in parts of Vietnam. You must have gotten some dirt in a cut or rubbed your eyes when your hands were dirty. Melioidosis can cause an inflammation of the brain and induce hallucinations. You’ve got a disease. A disease that can be treated.”
“I’m not sick,” Thang said.
“You are!” He motioned around the room. “We’re the only ones here and yet you keep insisting our long dead ancestors are with us.”
“They are.”
“They are not, Thang!” Luc raised his voice again. “And they are not directing you to try this crazy experiment. It is wrong and it is dangerous. And you are sick!”
Luc was adamant. But Thang was certain. The certainty of her ancestors convinced her. For days they’d been appearing in her lab, exhorting her to listen to them. To believe in their dao duc, their virtue and integrity. Her many, many ancestors had come to provide her with the power to protect all her family past, present and future.
And Thang believed the world was her family. As a geneticist, she knew at the mitochondrial level we are all one. And at the behest of her ancestors she was ready to instigate a change at the cellular level that would bring humankind even closer together.
So many of her ancestors had been taken by violence and war, or by the dislocation, crime, disease and famine that war fosters. They were begging her to end humanity’s endless cycles of violence. And Thang could.
In the hypo balanced on her finger was the enzyme she’d developed over years and had methodically tested on a variety of mammals. These were lab animals that displayed overly aggressive and belligerent behavior. Thang’s enzyme radically altered that behavior. Eliminated it. At the genetic level.
Thang had a cure for violence. For war. Her ancestors were sure of it and told her so. Only Luc stood in her way. He was a neurologist. A good scientist, too, and Thang respected him. But, he said she was sick. Out of her mind.
Wild.
Thang looked from Luc to her long gone great grandmother. The living and the dead. The present and the past. She clasped the hypo. Who did she owe more to?
Wild Thang knew the only answer: the future.
Luc was too slow to react, as she plunged the hypo into the meat of her thigh and depressed the plunger.
by submission | Dec 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
A soldier – roving through the miasma streams of rended forms and spectral cores, the broken gangrene and the fractal pain pouring from the fading – an anxious, empty, frenzied atavism without love and without feeling, except for the instinct to preserve the fragment self in the chaos of emanations and microdrones; the third year of the counterinsurgency against the unified Sytokyn storm – decayed outposts and senescent cells, and the savage, indiscriminate, endless bombardments of the N’ar; carrying an interferon charger, firing into the dismal storm, and the exploding swirling, crashing in dim tones.
by Julian Miles | Dec 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“This is the Stop Fraud hotline of the Department of Employment Assistance. My name is Flynn. How can I help?”
“I want to report the woman across the road. She’s ripping you off.”
“I can certainly assist with that, madam. Do you know her name?”
“Louisa Templehoff. That’s with two effs.”
“Do you know her address?”
“19 Maidendrove Way, Barnet Wood, West Sussex, RH22 6KW.”
“Thank you. Can I take your evidence?”
“She’s stealing! Money that could help real poor people. It’s my taxes! I have a right to demand she get sorted out!”
“I do understand, madam, but I will need more details. After all, what would this country come to if all you had to do was point a finger and shout loudly to get people ostracised?”
“What?”
“Miss Templehoff gave herself away, and you spotted it. How?”
“Well, since you ask, it’s her fancy man. He turns up once a month, always near dark, in a swish car. It’s a long, low one that’s really quiet. Wears a nice suit, unloads big bags, only stays a night. Can’t be for her looks, handsome bloke that he is. Anyway, he always leaves early, and never with more than one bag. If you ask me, she’s selling drugs for him.
“When she always goes out with her brat on tow, he’s got one of them new watches with a holo-wotsit display. How can she afford that working at the farm shop? Maisie tells me she’s never brought her kid to work, either. How does she pay for day-care? And you should see her phone. Oh my God, I can’t afford a basic Z-Phone, let alone the big one in the etched chrome case like she has! Then there’s her home. No old stuff at all. It all looks new, and her main screen is huge! Maisie’s hubby Jeff works at the Entertainment Hub store outside Chi. He said it costs over two grand! How can she claim to be poor if she can afford that sort of-”
“Let me stop you there, madam. That’s a lot of information, and I need to clarify some things.”
“What things?”
“Who is Maisie?”
“My best friend.”
“The swish car: did you notice the number plate?”
“648X701. Maisie’s Jeff thinks it’s a private plate. What’s someone who can afford those doing visiting a shop assistant in Barnet Wood?”
“A good question, madam. Now, I see you’ve called about this before. What made you call again?”
“She hasn’t been arrested!”
“You did receive the results of our last investigation, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But I’m sure her fancy man has friends in high places. Got the investigation shut down.”
“Madam, the investigation was not interfered with. It found no fraud.”
“That’s a lie. I’m not wrong. Maisie said it’s like those infovids you see online. You think they’re raving, until it happens to you. So you make sure your people do their jobs this time. Get her sent back home.”
Removing the headset, Flynn looks at the information laid out across his displays. ‘Louisa Templehoff’ has never claimed benefits. The diplomatic number plate gave him a clue. Routine queries and media archives provided enough to fill the gaps.
A princess from one of the asteroid belt monarchies had a fling while holidaying on Mars. Got pregnant. Refused to ‘do the right thing’. Disowned by her family, she quickly slipped from the news. Ten years later, it seems she’s settled, quietly raising her son in a little village on Earth.
It’s an unexpectedly happy ending – apart from the bigot who lives across the road.
by submission | Dec 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Hustle, hustle, hustle,” Selse hissed. “In this universe, you gotta go fast to go slow.”
Her training team was darting between a random course of high stone pillars, low walls and short ledges, crouching low, praying not to mess up. Selse was praying how to get away from this mess she’d been commanded to oversee. Ahead, one of her trainees careened into a ledge and swore loudly.
They’ll get themselves killed, Selse thought. Or worse, they wouldn’t get killed and would credit her. She didn’t want anything to do with this misfit outfit, but when Keeper said, “Train the bastards,” you did your best to train the bastards. Otherwise it was cut time. For real. And more than anyone in C-force, Selse knew what that meant.
And what it didn’t mean.
She cut to the trainee swearing and holding his head where he’d hit the ledge. “Quarkshit! Where’d you come from?” the stunned young man squeaked.
“From your worst nightmare, trainee.” Selse wasn’t even bothering to learn their names. It wouldn’t matter. Keeper would agree. “Your job is to learn this course. Your job is to learn to cut. You don’t have the luxury of hurting yourself. That’s my job.”
She backhanded his jaw, snapping his head up, so he’d see her pitiless eyes. “Now, get moving as fast as you can go slow.”
The trainee fled back to the course, but he looked more purposeful, more in the moment. Which was a good thing because the moment was about to get real.
Selse opened her connection with Keeper. “Cut ‘em,” she said.
The course evaporated. There was nothing. And everything.
Cut time still affected Selse. She’d been here as many times as anyone in C-force, and it still messed with her. No way to orient. No point of reference. No meaningful context. No fucking fun.
The only thing cut time left you was desire. The sheer desire to get back before the anchor of your memories pried loose in the relentless maelstrom of timelessness.
That was cut time. Being sheared from any construct of time. Everything happening at once and always. It was not something the average human handled well. In fact, very few handled it at all. But for those who survived cut time and made their way back to themselves, they developed the ability to temporize their immediate environment.
They could cut.
They could understand the rhythm of wave functions, the beat of quantum entanglement, the tempo of multiverses. They could hop, skip and jump across time. Fast forward in and out of their surroundings.
A useful skill. Very strategic. For those who could be trained to temporize. And those who trained them.
But these trainees, this chrono-cluster, Selse just didn’t get.
As she listened to the agonized cries, the absolute panic of her trainees, she wondered with ever-deepening misgiving, why Keeper had given her this bunch. How desperate could C-force be if Keeper thought musicians could handle cut time?
by submission | Dec 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael Kerby
A guy, licking the carpet.
He’s on all fours, in a Doctor’s waiting room. And he’s licking the carpet.
Tongue out, dragging it across the rough blue carpet like it’s the most important job in the world. It’s the kind of carpet designed for maximum wear and tear. It’s probably seen millions of shoes, mud, crumbs, child vomit, adult vomit — probably even a few rectal explosions.
The guy stops and looks at us. He shrugs.
“So what? You should see what the other guys got.”
He resumes his sandpapery drag across the floor. Occasionally he winces as he reaches the furthest his neck can stretch, the limit of his tongues reach, his lingual frenulum straining against the back of his bottom teeth. He stops and shuffles his body forward, and resumes.
He sits up on his knees. He spits. Pleh. A bit of fluff, hair, caught in his mouth. He looks at us.
“You know — it’s rude to stare.”
We avert our gaze. It feels woozy and groggy to move our eyes. We notice the door, but our legs don’t seem to move.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t concern yourself with that if I were you.”
Next to the door, on the wall, is a cork pinboard covered in poorly rendered crayon and felt pen interpretations of the humanoid form. Some have extra long arms, some have extra long feet. All of them have oversized black eyes. They’d be menacing if they weren’t smiling.
“They try their best but, when you get down to it, they’re still just kids. They try to make something that could please them, but they just don’t have the artistry, or the coordination. But, you know, they’re still learning–hey!”
He looks straight at us, a bit of lint hanging off his chin.
“I thought I told you to stop staring at me. I still have my dignity.”
We look away. Our eyes seem to skid like socks on a polished floor. We twiddle our thumbs and stare at the drawings.
“Y’nearly done yet, Bill?”
Bill stops. He sits bolt upright on his knees.
“Yes sir! Just a few patches left, around the edges!”
Bill hurries back down to his work, as a noodle-limbed humanoid lopes into the room on long flipper-like feet, holding a clipboard.
It reaches out and gives Bill a pat on the head, ruffling his hair. He pushes back against it like a dog.
“Haha, ok, ok. Good boy, Bill, good boy.”
It notes something down on its clipboard and Bill returns to work, his tongue running alongside the edge of the room where the carpet meets the wall, painstakingly clearing out years of packed in dust and dirt. He peers up at the humanoid.
“Mm. Gritty.”
It watches Bill work for a moment, makes a few notes, then turns and fixes its oversized black eyes on us.
It smiles serenely.
“Hey! You’re awake. Welcome, welcome.”
It reaches out its long spindly arm and pats us on the head.
“I hope you like linoleum.”
