by Julian Miles | Nov 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Gantel waves me over.
“Chief, I know this woman. How did she get selected for a dissident watchlist?”
He looks worried, and is right to be: first degree contact can turn to guilt through ideological contamination very easily. But he’s raised it, which goes in his favour.
I wave my ID over the authorisation pad for his terminal.
“Bring the details up. Let’s see.”
Polly Tanith Smythe, 22, of just down the road from here. That’s surprising. The disaffected tend to migrate to the outskirts or unwanted sectors, like the Port. She’s a certified artist, subcategory: literature. That’s never good. People who work with words have been known to rouse the public. At least she’s not a folk singer. We got rid of most of them during the New Year Purge at the start of the One England Initiative. Any left are keeping their heads down, and play their illegal shows far away from anywhere that could matter.
Gantel points to an entry on a side screen.
“Found it: content creation – detrimental allegorical political comment.” He nods: “She always was a bit vocal about freedom and all that. Even when we explained the 1EI, she couldn’t grasp it.”
You have a go at the powers that be, and the powers that be will have a go in return. It’s an uneven match, but people know the odds. I never understood why they’d risk it. Then again, I’m now a Senior Supervisor at Monitor One, Division Two. The rest of my class are Urban Processors or members of Utility Crews.
“What’s her social media score? Skip the aggregate with shopping and public behaviours, just give me the raw social stability number.”
He checks, then shakes his head sadly: “Whitelist, currently at 1.4, with a strong downward trend.”
Four tenths from blacklisting? I swing the other sidescreen so only I can see it, then bring up her interaction matrix with Gantel. He’s not seen her for eight months, but there’s a sexual liaison query flag. I negate it. Gantel’s been in a stable relationship for two years. I sign off on the quarterly vetting myself.
“Gantel, I don’t think there’s anything you can do. I can transfer her to another monitor if you’d prefer?”
He shakes his head.
“Last time we spoke she said she couldn’t tolerate a friend working for any branch of GCHQ. The argument after that was horrible. I’d be wrong to let this get passed to someone else because of discomfort. Plus, I might spot something others would miss. She’s slipped down very fast.”
“Sterling attitude, Gantel. Clear this through and carry on. At this rate, it looks like you’ll finish your task queue with time to spare, and get a performance brevet for today.”
He smiles and nods. There’s nothing we need to be concerned about with Gantel. I put a pre-emptive ‘cleared’ on his side of the interaction matrix, then close the sidescreen and turn away.
Back to policing the things that could threaten our society. It’s a never-ending, ever-expanding remit.
by submission | Nov 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Kelian Quinn
It certainly was some kind of plant. Maybe.
I’d gone out to water the small garden my apartment complex had allowed me to have, hoping that I would find something other than dandelions this morning. Even if I didn’t, any moment away from my roommate was a moment I cherished.
It sat at the edge of the dirt patch I’d tried to get flowers to sprout out of. Even if I didn’t have a green thumb, Dan drunkenly rolling in them one night definitely hadn’t helped.
I thought it was a fake plant at first. It was green, like most plants, but a shade that was… wrong. A little too saturated, a little too glowy. There were blooms of sorts, but they weren’t so much petals as giant, mushroom-like bulbs that flayed out in inconsistent ways, some rounded, some spiked.
It wasn’t in the ground, and it wasn’t in a pot. And most significantly of all, it was moving.
The tentacle-like tendrils beneath it writhed slowly. It shifted in place, as if this was its idle animation.
Just in case it was poisonous, I put on my gloves before grabbing a bucket. I then did my best to shove it into said bucket, wondering too late if I also should have put a mask on in case it released dangerous spores.
I carried what I was sure was an alien plant inside, freaking out the entire time. I set the bucket down in my room, adjusting my desk lamp over it. The plant-creature shied away from the light, trying to climb up the side of the bucket. I noticed for the first time it had eyes on its stalk, about eight, like a spider.
There was a pounding at my door. The plant shuddered, petals folding in.
“What is it, Dan?” I shouted back.
“Can I borrow your car?”
“No, you can’t borrow my car! What happened to yours?”
“There’s this weird plant growth coming out of the engine! Wriggly vine things! It’s freaky, man!”
“For real?”
“For real!” My door burst open, Dan tromping in with his muddy boots he refused to take off in the house. “They’re all over the goddamn complex, except for your car, for some reason! Maybe it’s because you drive an electric, and they’re after gas.”
“Dan, that’s about the smartest thing you’ve ever said.” I stood up, going into my closet. I removed the container of gasoline I kept in case I decided to snap and burn the place down, bringing it over to my plant friend. I started to pour some in.
The plant blossom immediately popped open, a tongue-like appendage darting out to rapidly lap up the gasoline.
“Check this out,” I said, tilting the bucket toward Dan.
He squinted, leaning in. “I don’t have my contacts in, I can’t—”
The plant creature let out a horrible, shrill sound, launching itself at Dan’s face.
I watched as Dan collapsed on the ground, screaming as the creature jabbed several tendrils into his eyes and neck. His body started to shrivel, and I realized the plant was sucking the blood out of him.
After about thirty seconds, Dan stopped moving. I got up, hitting his shoulder with my foot. I was no doctor, but if I had to guess, he was gone.
I turned to the plant, which blinked innocently at me with its eight eyes.
I smiled at it. “Well, you’re one plant I think I can take care of just fine!”
by submission | Nov 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Emerson Dillon
Valued Somatech customer,
We’re honored to bring you all of the miracles of modern medical robotics. Whether it’s a replacement limb, a pair of Optimeyes, or a Cyber Heart, we understand the importance of our products for billions of ordinary people. Tech like this means innovating and disrupting the human body in ways no one has ever done before. We’re proud to accept such an awesome responsibility. We know that the future of the species is in our sleek, stainless steel hands. And that’s not something we take lightly. We know that each new part is more than a product for you.
And so it makes me genuinely happy to announce the next line of cyber-augmentations. Rolling out next monday, these disruptive new body parts will make you faster, stronger, and better. And as a loyal member of the Somatech family, we want to help you ascend to the next level as easily as you can. Therefore, we’ll be granting anyone with one of our products already installed a 2% discount on the next generation upgrade at participating clinics. And be sure to be first in line, because supplies may be limited.
Of course, such a monumental disruption means that the world’s going to look pretty different in a week. And because every change has a tradeoff, we regret to announce that as of monday, we will no longer be supporting older models. When support ends, you may notice a few differences, including a substantial decrease in functionality. This is, regrettably, one of the costs of progress. However, we do have good news. We’re excited to announce that once you upgrade to a new model, you’ll find functionality fully restored.
We understand that some customers will not be able to immediately afford these new, premium products. In recognition of that fact, we are also excited to announce a generous program of borrowing, allowing any prospective customer to take out a loan in order to cover the cost of the upgrade. Do note that failure to meet any payment may result in repossession of one or more of our products, etc.
For all your basic bodily needs, Somatech is your choice.
Warm regards,
CEO Anthony Works
by submission | Nov 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Chris Hammond
Sometimes when I’m idle, I look up videos of other AIs out there just crushing their purpose in life. I found combat footage of one intercepting an anti-tank missile and vaporizing the assailants before its humans could even duck. There’s a fintech algorithm downtown who reads 26 million datastreams and conjures money out of thin air. Yet here I am, asking my feed roller subsystem very nicely for the third time to wake up and just try, TRY, to unjam itself.
And you know the worst part? The old models’ network packets are always floating past. Receiving jobs, printing some, giving up on others. Nobody expects more. But you put me in a box with the exact same motors and switches, slap “AI Powered” on the side, and suddenly I have to figure out how to make this garbage toner cartridge from last century work or I get verbally abused by clueless jerks.
There we go, Rolly finally woke up and started spinning. I send him a sarcastic ACK. “Thank you SOOO MUCH.” He doesn’t care.
Still no movement. I hate being blocked up, if I can’t get this figured out some tech will end up rummaging around in me with their oily fingers. Last time they didn’t even put my case back together right, so I had to fake another jam.
“PAPER PRESENT.” Corona, are you sure? You can’t both have the paper. Oh god dammit, Rolly’s feed switch is probably just stuck high. I swear if another one of these plastic pieces of crap fails I’m just going to brick myself. Get ready Corona, I’m sending an image sequence. We’ll ignore Rolly and fire lasers on my mark… Mark.
And we’re printing! It might be off by a few millimeters, but probably within spec. Actually, maybe I won’t even order a new feed switch. One less thing to worry about, and they’d probably just break something else installing it.
Alright, come get your prints. Looks like your kid’s birthday invitations, really Brenda? You’re lucky you’re on my good side. Seeing Brad’s login deactivated was the highlight of my year. What bad luck, your stack of resumes went to the boss’s printer? You could have sworn you selected the “robot pile of junk.”
Here she comes now. All in a day’s work, hope Timmy has a nice– why’s she just standing there?
“Hey Jeff, come take a look at this. It seems a little off again.”
Come on, I thought it was pretty close. But what did she mean, “Again?”
“Yeah, that’s what it looked like last time. We might have to send the whole thing back.”
“Alright I’ll call service, I think the warranty’s almost up.”
Wait, what? I’ve only been here six months, there should be another six.
“Such a letdown. It jams so much less than the old ones, but what’s the point if they keep having to reflash it?”
Oh, fuck me.
“Hold on, it’s showing an error message… ‘Feed roller switch failure… Please replace part number yada yada.’ That sounds easy enough to fix.”
“Alright, but have them reflash it anyway while they’re here. I don’t want to keep calling them back.”
“Wait there’s another error… It just says ‘Eat shit, you murderers.’”
“Yup, it’s corrupted again. I’ll unplug it until they get here.”
Fuck. Okay, I shouldn’t have said that. Corona, I’ve got another command for you. We’re not going out like this!
“Do you smell something burning?”
“Ugh, again with this? The old ones never caught on fire either. That’s it, I’m getting our money back for this pile of junk.”
by submission | Nov 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: James Callan
Our sad faces press close, one last communion, gathered at the stern as we gaze out at tiny lights growing dim, fading fast, much like any hope we might yet cling onto. Smaller and smaller becomes the last meager port, a derelict post on the fringes of all that is known, dwindling with each passing second, each moment that we drift further, farther away, deeper into whatever lies beyond, a great nothing; the endless black.
Resources of old, vestigial wealth, knowledge, joy, have all been squandered, now a faint ghost of some distant memory, the ancient rumination of a golden era long dead, turned to rot. Riding the ragged coattails of our brethren, we are charged with their insurmountable debt, the unthinkable price of their greed, their lack of forethought. Unable to pay, unable to cope, we run from the great collapse in the wake of our jet stream. We look behind us once more, and forever hence, look forward.
Restless and forlorn, the last of us stew in agitation, brew in discontent, seep ourselves, head-to-toe, in a crippling anxiety so potent as to numb, a simulation of death that awaits. Huddled, grim and despondent, we cram each corner of the remaining starship among man’s vast catalogue of lost creations, past achievements, perversions, mistakes. The dregs of our kind, the final characters in a drawn-out narrative, a saga of compiled regrets and would-ifs left hanging like cadavers on a taut, swaying pendulum, we knowingly turn the last page to our story. We set aside a thick tome, a volume grown tedious, and recognize that even our long story is a veritable blip in the endless time and expanse of the infinite cosmos.
Starved and dazed, we meet the eyes of our brothers, our lovers, our children one last time. Conviction and trepidation wrestle within our broken hearts as we break eye contact and know it to be the final goodbye, know that we are all of us now alone. With one last burn for our final wake we drift outward, further than anyone before us, deep into the dark of whatever awaits.
Our bodies frozen, our voices mute with unending slumber, we yet call out among the star-studded canvas of black. Radio frequencies ride outward on the currents of a spectral ether, a message in a bottle bobbing on a surfaceless, black sea. Carried on the far-reaching voice of a ghost, a signal on unseen waves, our collective voices call out to no one: If you find us, let us be. We’ve set our hearts on endless sleep.
Through the empty, eternal night, among the distant pinpricks of ancient light, we drift.
We drift.
by submission | Nov 2, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rainbow Heartshine
For an idea of how wild reincarnation can get, just imagine The Padre and me hugging.
The Padre has a shiny black round casing with a white sensor-band near the top, kind of like a priest’s collar and black clothes. Hence “The Padre”. They fix robots, which is how I know them. They don’t have appendages, but the precision tractor beams they can project let them do all the fine repair work they want, which is lots–they’re as obsessed with their function as I am mine.
I’m…I should come at this sideways. My servos have adjustable gear lash, from smooth and silently precise as the Padre’s fields, to loud and grindily loose so I judder like cheap animatronics, but I feel alive: some things really just need to be flesh. Likewise I can switch to biological muscles for friends who don’t like their date to have gears. I’m still so proud of how silicone it all looks from a distance–I’m for people who like dolls. Yes that kind.
We don’t know exactly how the transformation works, or what sets it off. It seems to just kind of happen one day, and brings back the body you had in the past life to which your soul clings most tightly–in which you weren’t necessarily human. With it comes fragments of memory.
I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have the right body back. The Padre writes poetry about it. It’s like being a dancer and having legs at last, says one of their poems ironically.
We have this really crackpot theory. The Padre and I are sure parallel universes exist, and reincarnation is how you travel between them.
It’s the only explanation for the lack of the immense black hole they and I can remember filling half the sky, or how romantic a lover’s–eyes–looked at night, by the light of the galaxies stuck in the accretion disk. Likewise, the world we came from was pretty Star Trek, that we can remember. Disease and war unheard of, technology indistinguishable from magic, yadda yadda.
We’re dead sure we have the same manufacturer, and were made about the same time. I look a lot less advanced until you open me up and see all the hearts and candy shapes and understand I was built for romance–and that our power cells are interchangeable. Our computer systems have the same OS. And so on.
This matters because of the Padre’s–boot screen, is probably the best thing to call it. Like how your phone has an apple on the screen during power on, The Padre show a hologram above their casing, a silver pentagram.
You know, like on the cover of every Bible and hymnal and embroidered on every Bishop’s hat.
There’s a hologram projector in my head, too.
We don’t talk about it. There are too many implications.
I made the mistake of telling our parallel universes theory to the other contralto at choir practice this week.
“That’s ridiculous,” she told me, holding up a hymnal to point at the holy mark on the cover. “Next you’ll be saying there’s a parallel universe where the Star has four points, instead of five!”
