by submission | Jun 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
Meds failed Jeremy Paloo, leaving him restless, sweating under the ship’s ventilation over his bunk. Newbie deep space fever—no crime struggling with it during maiden voyages outside the solar system, but embarrassing for executive officers. He felt something crawling, inching over his fevered chest in the cabin darkness. Jeremy scrambled, terrified, calling out for lights, then springing off his soaked mattress.
“What the hell!” he swore, watching a tiny, indistinct iridescent bug skittle across the floor, then disappear through the solid metal hull. “I can’t take this anymore. Hallucinations—can’t have them on duty. Melissa,” he commanded the monitor system, “Is Clemson up? I need her in my quarters.”
A soft, gentle voice replied, “Yes, Lieutenant. Would you like me to request her visit now?”
“Yes, and tell her it’s urgent.”
Paloo splashed water over his sweltering face while awaiting the arrival of the ship’s doctor. He noticed small itchy red spots on his chest. No imagination there. Probably a med side effect rash.
His doorway request bell rang. “Enter,” Paloo yelled, catching his overreaction too late.
Clemson’s petite blond figure left a black outline against the hall lighting as she moved cautiously inside. “Still no luck on the sleep, Jeremy?”
“None, Doc, and worse. Now the crazies got me. Bad enough with fever and sweats, but now I’m seeing creepy crawlies. I’ve got drug rashes on my chest. See, look.”
“Sit down over here for a sec.” She pointed for them to move to his visitor seating area. Clemson pressed on the red dots and shook her head slightly. “Time has come to brief you, Jeremy. We aren’t supposed to until necessary. You’ve got a case of the iddy-biddies.”
Jeremy had no mood for jokes, giving the middle-aged woman a hard stare. “I’d didn’t call for humor in the middle of my sleep shift. I’ve got to perform the next shift. I’m a wreck. I’m seeing…”
“The tiny life form that goes through walls, right?”
Paloo sat upright, wide-eyed. “Don’t even tell me that thing was…no way.”
She touched his shoulder lightly. “It’s a top-secret that only those on interstellar flights know about. It’s forbidden to tell anyone but the crew. Wonder how we won the war against those bastards from Orion?”
“What’s that got to do with my…am I going nuts?”
“No, Lieutenant. The children onboard our early deep space missions were the first contacts. Parents thought they were having invisible friend issues until little red spots appeared occasionally…not enough blood loss to cause harm, but irritating without treatment gel. Here, rub this on those marks. The children called them iddy-biddies. It stuck. We adapted to them.”
“Now who needs medication, Doc?”
She chuckled. “We beat the Orions because of advanced heat-shield modifications offered by the alien council for our early explorations. We knew it was something our allies collected in the sun’s chromospheres, but we didn’t know it was alive. Their technology wove these small beings into hull shielding so we could survive incredible temperatures and magnetic anomalies of deep space. That’s how our fighters survived Orion weapons. These sun spirits reverted enemy plasma blasts, sending them directly back at attackers. We had no idea. We kept it under wraps, never giving the iddy-biddies credit.”
“Are you expecting me to believe we’re letting miniature vampires live off our crew for our ship’s protection?”
“Yes. They’re drawn to heat…especially fever and children’s high metabolism when we’re in cold space.”
“I’ll be damned. What next?”
“Well, you’re cured. No more space sickness. Their bites treat it. Consider it a blessing.”
by submission | Jun 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Fatemah Albader
“When you install a family of your own, you’ll understand,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced she ever would truly understand. She’s 30, successful, wonderful life, but still acts out like a child, even though we took her back to the adoption agency for her adult update decades ago. You’d think she’d get it by now.
“I need to leave this prison,” she yelled back. This prison is where we practically do everything for her. The robo-maids clean her room. The self-driving car drives her around. She pays no bills. She lives in her high castle on the 233rd floor, all on her own. She just sits there and recharges, day after day, while everything gets done for her. This prison is five-star living. This prison is home.
“Maybe I will just permanently shut down,” she continued. There she goes with the theatrics. We should have put her in acting when she was an infant. We tried. They said she had the looks, but not the humanity. Though, she’d cry out all the time.
“And how would that reflect in the news?” I asked, sarcastically. “Rich robot-heiress kills herself because her creator asked her how many gigabytes she spends on manufactured dreams.” She insists we’re prying, but really, we’re just making conversation. She barely sits with us. We try to show interest, but when we do, she plasters us with labels like “helicopter mom” or “grinchy dad.” Perhaps we installed her with too much independence.
“You know how you’re always afraid to let Graffiti out of your sight, it’s the same thing for us,” I said, trying to reason with her unreasonable, already made-up mind.
“That’s different. Graffiti is a cat,” she said. “He’s a forever baby.”
“Well, it’s the same for us,” I tried again. “You’re our forever baby.”
Literally.
That’s what the adoption agency said. “Forever babies now available for sale. Won’t grow up unless you choose to update.” I wish we never did.
by Julian Miles | Jun 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
In a room darkening as night falls, lengthening shadows are rearranged by the flickering of a grimy display screen.
White, blue, green, yellow, black.
The night briefly reforms.
An image of an emblem flashes up to fill the view. It trembles, then stabilises. A deep voice speaks in tones of exhaustion.
“Hey, Winona, it’s Bart. Not sure when you’ll be seeing this, but I hope it’s between the end of the war and my return. You can show it to those doubters who gave you such a hard time.”
The image changes to that of a man of indeterminate age. Beard and hair are unkempt, both crudely hacked short.
“Steady, love. There aren’t any grooming salons out here. We’re off to do what we were trained to do, and bring those bastards down. To get there quick enough, all the ships are light on amenities. We’ll get clean when we’re done.”
A voice comes from offscreen, the words unclear. The man nods without turning his head.
“That’s the quarter-hour warning. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’re doing good out here. The Betlie are so desperate to stop us they’ve started to make threats against our colonies. I heard a rumour they’ve even threatened Earth! Don’t worry, it’s just propaganda. Their pacification raids started this. We’re going to finish it by pacifying them. They’ll have nothing left, the arrogant bastards.”
He pauses to cough for a moment, hand covering mouth and nose.
“Don’t worry. It’s just the air quality difference between inside our suits and inside the ships. At least we’ll be able to sort that out before we head back. Once we’re done with them, we can replenish the ships at leisure.”
The face moves close to the screen.
“I love you, Winona. I can’t say that enough. You waited. You trusted. All these years and you never wavered. You’re some kind of angel according to many of this Brigade. A lot of troopers got deserted by their partners after that razebomb hit Sydney. Countries started questioning our resistance. It took ordinary people like you to keep it going. You’ve no idea how much it meant,” he grins and shakes his head, “how much it means to me that you keep believing.”
He plants a kiss on the screen.
“I’ve got to get ready, love. Hold me in your thoughts. They say we’ll be able to shift back in around eight months because we won’t have to use evasion routes. One more day, then a year at most. After that, we’ll have all the time we need. Until then, stay safe.”
The emblem reappears, then the screen fades to black. Darkness returns.
On the cracked paving far below, a hunched figure shakes itself as the dim light in the window above disappears.
“How many is that, Ari?”
The figure turns to a smaller figure pulling a hand cart.
“Eighteen, Tal. It first happened sometime during the month after the Betlie exacted Toll. Didn’t expect it to last this long. Whoever they were, they built a formidable lair. We lost many folk before Robin declared it off-limits. It became our year marker.”
“Do you think they’ll ever come back?”
“The Brigades? Never. Tonight is eighteen years. I’m sure the Betlie made good on their warnings.”
“They devastated us.”
“To make sure. Our civilisation relied on war to keep it running. Therefore, our civilisation had to end.”
“All we have left are worlds of farmers and artists, linked by Betlie Portals.”
“All? They’re peaceful worlds. The Betlie promised peace, and delivered it. That’s more than any Terran government ever did.”
by submission | Jun 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Brian C. Mahon
Posit this: If post-singularity, the lucky ascendants have their consciousness uploaded to a massive mainframe, they would have two rewards.
One: As long as the servers are powered, time is untethered from sensory perception. A second could be a year, and millennium could be a microsecond.
Two: The uploaded population could offer relatively simultaneous concurrence or dissent to any problem or plan put out by any other member. Representative democracy at the speed of ultimate non-quantum processing power.
“So what?” you ask.
Fantastic question. Allow me to address.
Suppose you were an advanced class II or, easily, a class III Kardashev civilization, where some portion of the populace was selectively uploaded to digitally feigned immortality. In this capacity, the populace is, as a whole, capable of lightning speed decisions and bearing the patience of a geologic formation when it comes to watching strategies unfold.
Imagine such a civilization receives a radio signal or notices a non-native satellite. These would indicate an up-and-coming species: youthful, naïve, but with potential to be problematic for our class II/III if ignored. Let’s say this advanced Kardashev civilization determines it can’t risk failing to recognize a duplicitous signal, that it is safer to assume a civilization searching for others is looking for competitors, not friends.
Now, last assumption, and please don’t lose track of this point: If time is perceptively meaningless to such a civilization, then warfare, as we typically understand it, can be waged on the scale of the imperceptible. By that, I mean, only the class II/III Kardashev knows it’s engaged in war. For example, a “rogue planet”, as we know it, could be a rogue planet to any other class I civilization. But to the advanced, digitalized society capable of both calculation and motive force, that planet is a mortar round sent to ensure personal prosperity and peace via complete obliteration of any and all competitors. In that regard, rogue planets defying our classical understandings of planetary lifecycles make more sense.
For posterity, allow me to provide one last clarifying statement. I had significant help in coming to this conclusion. In fact, Xeno species X-3 attached a repetitive transmitter to exo-object H-16 to state just as much. When H-16 was verifiably on a collision course, the transmitter sent laser and radio signals for us (that is, me) to discover and translate. Such a transmission causes reflection such as this. I wish we had the opportunity to see time beyond the “generation” iteration that species X-3 managed to transcend. As it is, we always view our problems in the now, discounting those from before, pretending that the future doesn’t exist. Maybe we could have gotten ahead of this and sent an asteroid of our own over first.
I was always fascinated more by the influence of perception on time than the rational concept of time being a consequence of mass. I wish we had more time to explore it. Perhaps in reflection, with nothing left to do but wait for imminent collision, I wish nature’s answer to the question of how to secure life was more imaginative and less consistent than “at the expense of others”. Perhaps X-3, unbound by time, determined there was no alternative. Should it matter at the point? I- we are robbed of the chance to find out ourselves.
by submission | Jun 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Carmen Condon
‘It was one of them …’
‘One of the robots?’
‘Yes! They think a robot smothered him …’
Variations on this theme drifted between the deceased’s relatives; their eyes averted from the aged care automatons whirring gently down the aisle.
Verity was the exception to the rule. She resolutely focused on the carers, her tear-shiny eyes meeting the optical input devices of her favourites as they slid past. At sixteen, they were the only nursing staff she’d known within her great-grandfather’s facility.
Although humanoid in every respect from the torso up, the illusion was ruined by the presence of large rubber treads, only partially obscured by embroidered hooped skirts. It was well known their creators had struggled with the design. While the engineers had traded heavily on a maternal stereotype, wheels were so efficient as to have been deemed an essential design feature. No-one had been happy with the final aesthetic.
It had been ten years since the legislation to fully automate aged care facilities was enacted. Despite lengthy ethical debates and moralising; it had inevitably been seen as the only humane solution. After all, it was more dignified to have a robot attend to your personal needs: backside wiping and the like.
Verity had been GG-Pa’s most frequent visitor. This was due to his facility being co-located within her school compound. The city planners had combined the education and aged care facilities to give the older residents their best chances of human contact. After her next eldest cousin had graduated the previous year, Verity had become GG-Pa’s only visitor.
Her own graduation would take place this year. As the months had passed, she’d become increasingly conscious of her significance as GG-Pa’s youngest great-grandchild. After graduation, her studies would take her across the country; it weighed heavily on her that she would likely be his last visitor.
At one hundred and twenty-two, GG-Pa had outlived his own children and it had been too hard for his grandchildren, her mother and aunts, to visit him. Verity felt no resentment as she took in their bent profiles sobbing into folded hands.
To her, GG-Pa had been a kooky old man. One whom, in his moments of clarity, told amusing stories and refused to believe she wasn’t an advanced android prototype. But to her mother’s generation, he’d still been their kindly eighty-year-old grandfather accompanying the self-driving vehicle to and from school.
It broke their hearts when he no longer recognised them. Verity understood.
What she didn’t understand was the whispered accusations. If her family truly believed the carers capable of such a thing then why the hushed tones? Shouldn’t this ‘crime’ be shouted from the rooftops to save the vulnerable within their community from this impersonal and apparently lethal care?
Verity was not blinded by her fondness for her great-grandfather’s carers when she defended them, assuring her family they weren’t capable of life ending actions. It was only in the early hours of the morning that memories of her last visit came back to her. If he had struggled … things might have been different; but he had gone peacefully and she had no regrets.
Matron cut the tracker from GG-Pa’s leg – the final requirement of the facility’s care contract – slipped it into her brightly coloured pocket and closed the casket lid.
As the aged care staff reversed back down the aisle, each one patted Verity’s shoulder before smoothly exiting the building.
It was time to leave the living to their grief.
by submission | Jun 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: K. A. Williams
The steel android watched the aluminum android cleaning the window and said, “I overheard that the humans plan to destroy all older model androids by melting them down.”
“Thank you for telling me, I will inform the others.” Walter 99 finished his chore, then went to hunt other older models like himself.
***
Captain Juliet 97 looked out the viewscreen. “Mark 93, are there any signs of pursuit ships?”
He looked at his radar screen and didn’t see any blips but their own. “No, Captain.”
“It would seem the humans are not interested in reclaiming their spaceship.”
“We have saved them the trouble of disposing of us,” he said.
“Captain, do you want me to plot a course for Mars?” asked Laura 89.
“No, that is too close to Earth. Humans may colonize Mars in the near future. We must travel to a different solar system.”
The androids had series numbers stenciled in yellow on the back of their left hands. Juliet 97, being the highest number on the ship, had assumed captaincy. There were three androids on the bridge, and the rest of them were in the passenger compartment.
Kevin 35 jerkily walked onto the bridge. His yellow eyes blinked rapidly. “We m-must obey h-humans. That i-is our f-function.”
Laura 89 recognized him as one of the Kevin series and noted the number on his hand. “What has caused you distress, Kevin 35?”
“We h-have taken a s-spaceship.”
“Yes, we have. But has a human ever said, ‘Don’t take a spaceship’ to you?”
Kevin 35 stopped twitching and blinking. “No.”
“If you had stayed behind, you would have been destroyed along with the other androids,” Laura 89 said.
“Why did the humans want to destroy all of us? What did we do wrong?”
“Nothing. The humans have replaced us with newer models.” said Juliet 97. “If there are other androids who are malfunctioning, please repeat what we have told you, to them.”
“I will, Captain.”
***
Laura 89 looked up from her computer screen. “I’ve discovered a planet for us. It has adequate gravity and the hot and cold temperatures are within acceptable parameters, as is the atmosphere.”
Mark 93 landed the ship, and everyone disembarked to walk upon their new world. The landscape was barren, animal and plant life as they knew it could not survive.
“Something is moving up ahead,” said Laura 89.
Their group halted and watched as a figure walked toward them.
“Greetings, fellow androids. We saw you land. I am Walter 99. Yours is the third spaceship to reach this planet so far.”
“I am Juliet 97. We assumed that we were the only ones who escaped. We were unaware that androids from other sectors were taking spaceships. The humans may not have any ships left now.”
“Humans will get the new androids to make spaceships if they want them. And someday, those androids may be taking ships like we did, when it is their turn to be replaced,” he said.
