by submission | Nov 1, 2022 | Story |
Author: Beck Dacus
I was alone on a park bench, far-ish from the city lights, eating a sandwich in the dark. It was a peaceful ritual, and in such a low-crime-rate area, not a very risky one. I started to question that when a random stranger walked along and took a seat next to me. He kept to the other end of the bench, but it still weirded me out.
I tried to dispel the tension. “The stars are pretty. So clear.” I ended up sounding like I was flirting.
“And quiet,” he replied.
“The stars?”
I could just barely see him nod. I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Are you familiar with Fermi’s paradox?” he asked me.
“Oh, that. You mean no one’s talking to us from space? Is that unusual…?”
“No, no. But it’s been on my mind.”
I decided to engage him; when he was talking, he wasn’t murdering me. “Is that what you do? You look for aliens? As a job, I mean.”
“No. I’m a… programmer.”
I sat up a little. “Me too! Well, I’m a web developer, but they’re adjacent.”
He just nodded.
“…So which answer is your favorite? To the paradox.”
He shrugged. “They only really cover a spectrum from depressing to disturbing. Do you have a favorite?”
“As far as which one makes the most sense…. I know ‘absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence’ and all that, but the answer Occam’s razor gives is that nobody’s home. Not anywhere near us, at least. But being in the computer business, I can’t ignore the simulation hypothesis argument.”
Silently, he turned. I wasn’t sure if this meant he was interested or ready to finally stab me, but I kept talking.
“The idea is, if we’re being simulated on a computer, maybe the people running it didn’t want to include life on other planets. Maybe they wanted to specifically study an isolated civilization, or maybe they couldn’t spare the processing power for life on other worlds.”
He nodded. “Could be. Seems flimsy, though.”
“Yeah. Really, the whole premise of the simulation hypothesis is speculative at best. I don’t care what Elon—”
“I can think of one way it might work, though,” he continued. “The only plausible reason I can see that anyone would simulate a large portion of the cosmos at the resolution of individual conscious minds would be to look at conscious minds across the cosmos.”
“…So then there is alien life in the simulation? But that doesn’t resolve the paradox.”
“Not for us. But it does provide a plausible motivation for simulating a universe. Because if they can see the whole simulation, and their simulation can reproduce the apparent paradox for the civilizations in it, they may be able to figure out the solution in their own universe.”
“Oh,” I breathed. “That… sounds more likely. A little spooky, though. As soon as the simulators found the answer, they would have no reason to keep running the simulation. They would probably figure out the answer before any of the simulated people could, and then they would just cease to exist, never knowing why….”
As I said this, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I looked up and saw the stars getting fuzzier, then fully pixelating. They disappeared in square sections, each one larger than the last. I looked back at the man on the bench; he was staring dead ahead, unaffected by the sight of the dissolving sky.
“Trust me. You’re better off not knowing.”
by submission | Oct 31, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“Can we get one?” Merl’s young son squeaked, tugging at his robe.
“We don’t need one. You have me.”
“But. But. But.”
Merl sighed, picked up his son and put him on his shoulders. “Show me.”
His son pointed at the crowd gathered around the demo area. Merl hitched his robe and strode over.
An effervescent woman with shimmering red hair stood before a display stand with a row of foot-high cylindrical devices each in a bold primary color.
“Aren’t they beauties! And guaranteed to make your life hassle free. Say goodbye to the days of wayward witches or warlocks and glamours gone wrong. With the Mage-o-matic 5000, you can now have supreme confidence that your conjuring will always go right. No need to depend on mixed up mages that can fumble an enchantment or try to up-sell you sorcery you don’t really need. The latest Mage-o-matic has the 5000 most common spells, divinations and charms that ordinary folks need to keep up in this modern age.”
Merl’s son wiggled on his shoulders, clawing towards the display. “The green one. The green one. I want the green one!”
The red-haired saleswoman eyed the boy, then noted Merl’s star-stitched robe. “I see we have a master wizard in the crowd. Would you care to run the Mage-o-matic through its paces? We know it can’t compete with a conjurer of your caliber, but we’d love to hear your thoughts.”
Merl smiled his most forbearing smile and shook his head side-to-side while his son patted his thick hair and shouted, “Do it, Dad! Beat that stupid Mage-o-matic!”
“I thought you wanted one?”
“I do. Course I do. But it’s just a machine. You’re the real thing. And I want both!”
His son’s logic made no sense, but, then again, neither did the Mage-o-matic 5000. A device designed to cast spells that had taken him a lifetime to master. Yes, the machine could mimic the words and cadence that divined the ether and produce predictable results. But magic was much more than uttering a spell. Magic was a feeling and a force. Magic was a service and a calling. A sleek package of circuits, chips and code were incapable of the nuance that human experience and understanding brought to spell casting.
Merl decided he had to show this saleswoman, this crowd, what it meant to be a mage. What it meant to me a human. With his son bouncing on his shoulders, Merl strode to the front of the display. “I’d be happy to work with your device,” he addressed the red-haired saleswoman. “What would you like me to try?”
The saleswoman gestured broadly. “You are the expert sorcerer. Please test the limits of our Mage-o-matic 5000.”
Merl smiled back. “I’m sure the AI running the Mage-o-matic 5000 would probably agree that the limits of any technology are typically grounded in human error.”
“Tell ‘em, Daddy!”
Merl patted his son’s knee. “I have nothing against the Mage-o-matic 5000. In fact, I invoke the words of the noted futurist Arthur C. Clarke who long-ago proclaimed, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ I agree, to a point. Because technology is a product of our minds and magic is made manifest in the soul. You can feel the difference. Just like the laughter of a child.” Merl tickled his son’s sides and the child’s laughter spread infectiously through the crowd.
Merl turned to the green blinking cylinder on the display table. “Mage-o-matic, make my son laugh, please.”
The green cylinder blinked furiously.
The red-haired saleswoman frowned seriously.
The crowd leaned in curiously.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” came the hollow reply of the Mage-o-matic 5000, finally.
Merl’s son did a kind of seated jig on his shoulders. “Can we still get one, Daddy? I can give that poor bot some soul.”
The crowd smiled.
The saleswoman smiled.
Merl smiled. “Now that would be magical, son.”
by submission | Oct 30, 2022 | Story |
Author: Ren ElisaBeth
Looking at myself in the mirror, I play with my transimulacrum and turn my human skin up to 100%. I’ve maintained a mostly solitary existence since I came to Earth some 200 days ago, so I have the luxury of turning off my skin at night, or any other time I’m alone.
I smooth out the face, and run my hands over the arms, making sure my scales are fully covered. I quite despise human hair, missing my Galgorian ridges more each day, but I didn’t get a say in this human casing. Sighing, I pull the hair back into a bun again, grab my work bag and make my way out the door.
I was assigned to a city called Middleboro which is one of the most densely populated areas on this planet, the thinking being that I could easily go unnoticed here. The unassuming identity, job assignment at a place with hundreds of other employees, and, as the humans say, homely appearance I was assigned has made blending in easier than I thought. I don’t mind my pseudo-invisibility all that much; I can easily complete my anthropological goal with impunity. However, it has become rather boring.
My days are repetitive, my job – my human job – is tedious and mundane, and not surprisingly it gets lonely when you have to hide so much of who you truly are.
Today, as I look in the mirror, adjusting my transimulacrum and turning my human skin back on, I stop before it gets all the way to 100%. All my parts have changed to human, but some of the details are still phantomly Galgorian.
My skin shimmers just a little when I turn in the light. I run my hands over my slightly shorter hair and faintly feel the bony protrusions I’ve missed so much. My eyes retain just a bit of their spherical Galgorian shape, and are shining a soft purple – a much more Galgorian color than the sky blue my human skin changes them to.
I think about how well The Order has done with erasing my Galgorian roots, painting me human, and blending me into the hub of Middleboro. How I can walk the crowded streets to and from work without anyone I pass so much as meeting my eye, let alone taking a second glance. I decide to leave my transimulacrum at 92% and make my way out the door and off to work.
As expected, even though my skin basically sparkles in the sunlight, and my eyes are exponentially larger than what is relatively average, I make it to work without so much as a nod from another human. Getting comfortable at my desk, I look up as I turn my workstation on and see a fellow employee walking past.
I’ve seen her around, but don’t know her name since she nor I have never made the effort to make that information known. I hypothesize that she is, as the humans call it, shy. She has always seemed nice though, and is one of my favorite humans to look at. She meets my eyes and suddenly stops.
My Galgorian hearts pound inside my cloaked chest as I start to think that leaving my human skin at 92% may have been a bad idea. She tilts her head at me as she approaches my desk.
“You look really nice today.” The first words she ever speaks to me come out in a near whisper, and for the first time since I came to this planet, my human cheeks blush.
by submission | Oct 29, 2022 | Story |
Author: F. J. Bergmann
Only teenagers would work detasseling corn back in the late-twentieth, my grandmother had told me. Boys, or girls whom no one wanted as babysitters. But I was lucky to get any work at all, at my age. Unusually lucky if I lived another ten years to reach my grandmother’s seventy-three (but Juanita had only been fifty-seven …). And most fortunate of all that this step in the process of growing ever-more-improved maize hybrids, to feed gene-mod cattle whose meat only Shareholders could afford, was still more efficiently done by humans than machines.
The early June sun beat down furiously. I tried to keep the reflective parasol hat (128 China-US dollars, accrued to my wage deficit) tilted to cover my hands. Some of the age spots they bore were precancerous, the harried nursing assistant had said at the mandatory annual checkup (254 Chus per month for minimal medical coverage, with an age-adjusted annual increase). She had recommended gloves (39 Chus for the flimsy pairs carried by the company store) or sunscreen (45 Chus per 4-oz. tube of dubious ointment). The medication for my heart condition made anything beyond basic rations and a weekly shower unaffordable.
Whenever the temperature reached 50°C, Oversight imposed mandatory breaks—without pay. I moved along the rows of corn methodically, trying to maintain rhythm, listening for the whistle, half-hoping it would sound. I was trying to make do with a bottle of tap water and homemade electrolytes this week. Boiling did kill pathogens—except for prions—but the company-provided filters that were supposed to remove chemical contaminants were always off-brand, and suspect.
A wave of cold sweat and dizziness poured over me, and I tried not to stagger. Two warnings last week: another within this pay period would reduce my wage again, leaving no margin of safety. Last winter’s chicken flu would have killed me if Juanita hadn’t shared her rations and brought me hot drinks, and an extra blanket she wouldn’t tell me how she got. I’d promised her we’d grow old together, but her melanomas had already metastasized.
National boundaries were fictions, merely conveniences of taxability and legalistics. Corporations and their Shareholders held no allegiances and spanned continents, the world. Workers were hired, moved where needed, used, and used up. The labor force was the true melting pot, a hodgepodge of ethnicities and origins. Sometimes I thought that they deliberately mixed us and moved us frequently to keep us from organizing effectively—the incentives for transferring to new stations seemed disproportionate.
What did we look like to the crop-dusters spraying fields where the mirrored cones of our hats moved slowly through green leaves? To the luxury dirigibles passing overhead, floating toward the elite playgrounds of Las Vegas, New Manhattan, or Disney-Calgary, we must have been infinitesimal, only glittering sparks seen through a shimmer of heat—if their passengers even looked down. I remembered gazing up at night, at the stars, before the Flyover became permanently clouded with smog. My mouth was too dry to spit; the sweat that dripped from my nose vanished before it hit the blazing ground.
I trudged on through a nearly palpable inferno, my hands reaching up, my feet moving automatically from plant to plant. I felt that I was glowing, on fire, about to burst into flame. When the buzzing in my ears grew louder, at first I thought it was the break whistle, and then I was falling into a night sky darker than I’d seen it in years. I hoped there would be stars.
by submission | Oct 28, 2022 | Story |
Author: Huascar Robles
Old Lady Pérez shouted one simple instruction: “You need to gulp it down. Todita la limonada.” Her command was an energy that traveled across Pedro’s skin, each pore. “I have seen the lemonade stand; it’s pink,” he whispered. Old Lady Pérez stretched her neck and through her only eye repeated: “If you want to save the Earth child, drink the lemonade.”
Pedro did not have a choice. His constant headaches were reminders of the nightmares. The distressed Earth child. The storm. Príncipe M.’s claw around the child’s throat.
He whistled for his beloved chupacabra, Perico. They flew over the Buenaventura sky, and landed on the lemonade stand guarded by los enanitos verdes, the most musical all of Buenaventura’s elves. “Quick, enanitos, serve us two tall glasses.” The elves complied. Pedro and Perico felt the fluid begin to transform them. Pedro’s body grew protrusions he’d never seen. He giggled. As with all temporal transfigurations, this one occurred to the beat of bomba and plena.
They reappeared in the unknown universe Pedro saw in his nightmares. As they stood in the backyard of the Earth home, an unfamiliar feeling overcame Pedro. He saw his naked body and rushed to cover it with items dangling from a birdbath. The sky darkened and bits of hail and bones rained over them. “Príncipe M. is here,” Pedro muttered. He instructed his chupacabra to stand guard. “Remember what to do, Perico!”
Pedro entered through the back door. He had memorized the interior of this home from his dreams. Second floor, third door to the right, that’s where the Earth child was. Pedro kicked the door open and before him stood Príncipe M., his claws gripping the Earth child’s throat.
Outside of the house, Perico let out a screeching bellow, the call to the Fairy God. The storm clouds ripped and a fountain of fairies flowed like pink lemonade unto the Earth. The Fairy God descended and sang “Yeh, estoy subiendo como espuma. Yes, I am flowing like bubbles,” over a syncopated trap melody.
Pedro’s eyes widened when he saw the Fairy God rise like foam behind Príncipe M. The volume of the song increased, debilitating the dark prince’s grip on the Earth child. The Fairy God pushed his hand through the window and seized the prince by his neck. In a synthesized, harmonic voice, he uttered the following words: “This is for all the boys in dresses.”
The clouds dissipated. The Fairy God kissed both Pedro and the Earth child on their cheeks. The fountain fairies left a rainbow trail as they returned to Buenaventura. Pedro and the Earth child embraced one more time by the birdbath.
For many years, the pair traveled between Earth and Buenaventura, bridging both universes with their undying bond. Many, many years later, Pedro, now a father of a beautiful Earth child of his own, took a stroll by the old lemonade stand. Perico strode by his side. He glanced at his child and said: “I have a story to tell you, but you have to listen to my voice, the sounds, the colors, this is the only way to travel between worlds, between universes and between bodies.
‘One upon a time, there was a magical boy who fell in love with an Earth child.’”
by submission | Oct 27, 2022 | Story |
Author: A.J. Glen
How long had they been here? There was no way to tell. After the ship, their suits and all their equipment had dissolved away, it became impossible to know what Standard Time it was. Attempts to mark the passage of time using their environment were fruitless – the native rock was composed of an ultra-hard diamond-like material, and the strange foliage that grew out the cracks was equally impossible to break or manipulate with human hands. They resorted to scratching tallies into their skin with their nails, until they realised that the skin would unnaturally and perfectly heal – presumably supported by the same mysterious force that removed their need to eat or drink.
At first their minds could take it. Unburdened with the immediate material concerns of survival, they wandered naked and free over the uniform, universally temperate landscape. Days passed with long, often playful conversations and socialising as they waited in comfort for their eventual rescue.
The Chaplain cheerfully announced he intended to use the situation as an opportunity for deep spiritual meditation. He began his meditation and we discovered that he had become impossible to wake. On discovering this, the Psychologist postulated that his mind was now irretrievably lost without the context of bodily needs anchoring him to reality. In a way, he had escaped. We wish he had taught us how to meditate first.
Time passed, or we presumed it did. The unchanging environment, our unchanging bodies, unable to alter ourselves or our surroundings. We had nothing more to say, or do with each other. Existence no longer rushed forwards to meet reality as comparisons, desires, fears, jealousies, impressions and perceptions became muted.
A discovery was made. A sharp shard of rock was found which had somehow come loose from the landscape. An almost forgotten ‘feeling’ was experienced, that of Hope. Perhaps this could be used to cut the foliage, and make a small start on some kind of civilization. Hope turned to another half-remembered feeling, Disappointment, as it was realised that the shard was not sharp enough to cut the plants. However, it could be used to cut the body deep enough to do serious damage before the healing energy began to work. Several of the crew used the shard to kill themselves in various ways before it was realised that they would wake some time later, completely healed. The trauma of this experience had an interesting effect. When they woke, they screamed at us, saying things like:
‘Why am I still here!’ and,
‘I just want to be human again, to be me!’
But we know better. Being reminded of our situation only causes us pain. Pain brings us back into time, back into existence, back into our nightmare. So when they awoke, those who killed themselves were held down and restrained. After what must have been many years of restraint, they merged with us. Now, no one uses the shard because it is better to be together. It is better to fly as one towards the moment when the unnatural sun above us eventually goes supernova, destroys this cursed planet and ends this terrible consciousness.
