by submission | Nov 15, 2024 | Story |
Author: Nell Carlson
The girl died. Normally, that would have been the end of it. Thousands of people died every day and millions had died in The Culling and nothing especially unusual happened afterwards. But the girl had died on the black river at the same time millions of people had been praying in remembrance and revenge and maybe that had made all the difference. After all, the river had been sacred before being so polluted that the waters formed black sludge as the tributaries died up one by one.
Later, of course, the oligarchs had requisitioned the river claiming it was too toxic for anything but their experiments. No one but their military personnel were to have access to the area the officers had made their base but the girl was starving. And starving people will take measures others would not. They fed her bullets, of course, as she ran over the causeway and cursed as she threw herself in the black water rather than falling flat on the causeway like they’d anticipated.
They filed their reports and sent someone to clean up the blood and promptly forgot about the killing. They killed someone every day, hundreds of people a day, sometimes, and they had simply fulfilled the Modus Operandi for thievery, of course. But in the water, in the form that had been the girl, something woke up.
The plague arrived the next day and in weeks the base became a memory but the body of the girl or rather something wearing her form walked away.
by submission | Nov 14, 2024 | Story |
Author: Beck Dacus
Each time the floor shuddered, all our chains rang like windchimes. The shackles around my ankles were linked to the wrists of the “inmate” behind me, on and on in a long line of us marching forward. As I stumbled I pulled on that man’s wrists, nearly bringing him down as well.
“Accretion disk turbulence,” growled the guard to my left. “Keep moving.”
I pushed up my glasses and walked. One by one they were patting us down, then ushering us through the docking tube into the shuttle. So far no one had made a scene.
We knew there was no way out.
I received my pat-down. I asked the guard, innocent as you like, “You know anything about the appeals process around here?” I could tell she wanted to bite my head off, but it was against policy for her to say anything. No one’s allowed to speculate what happens down there, because deep down they already know.
I shuffled into the shuttle and took my seat. “I heard,” said the chatty inmate across from me, “that we’s gonna get smeared all across the event horizon. Like bugs on a windshield, broke down t’little particles.”
“Nah,” another said. “Just inside the black, there’s a wall of fire. Fire so hot you burn to nothin’, not even atoms left behind.”
Mercifully I had been near the end of the line. The docking door shut behind the last inmate, and the walls hissed as our life support went independent. One final shake marked the shuttle’s detachment; harsh, white light flooded through the windows as we left the docking bay. Outside, the black hole’s gleaming accretion disk swirled close to lightspeed, the shuttle’s force screens the only thing standing between us and the hard radiation it was spewing out. The retrorockets ignited, and we were on our way down.
The guy across from me was a nervous talker. “So which is it, poindexter? You think we’ll get squished or fried?”
“We don’t know,” I shrugged. “That’s the point. The civilized galaxy gets to wash their hands of us with their conscience clean, because it’s not an execution. No one can prove that we’re dead, not without following us down there. So they call us inmates, locked in the perfect prison.
“But the math is clear. The inside is the same as the outside, and… well look.” I nodded to the window. “That used to be stars. Same will happen to us; we just need to get closer.”
Mr. Mouth slapped the guy next to him. “Listen to this! Talkin’ math at me. What are you in for anyway, four-eyes?”
I sneered at him. “Would you like to find out? I could use the practice.”
“Prepare for final crossing,” the autopilot’s voice cut in over the intercom. The accretion disk receded behind us, the nothingness of the event horizon filling the sky, then swallowing us whole. Aside from the cabin dimming, nothing changed.
I looked back at Mr. Mouth and shrugged. “What’d I tell you? Same shit, different spacetime.”
He looked like he was about to spit in my eye when he was rammed forward against his restraints. I was pressed into my seat so hard I almost blacked out, until the acceleration vector changed, pulling us all toward the back of the ship. I saw flashes of green light through the cabin windows, unnervingly close.
“Beginning evasive maneuvers,” the autopilot belatedly remembered to inform us.
“What the hell is going on!?” one of the other inmates said. The autopilot’s response seemed tense, almost afraid.
“It appears we are taking fire. From below.”
by submission | Nov 13, 2024 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
The changeover hasn’t ever been subtle, but long ago, centuries ago, it wasn’t so difficult, so intense and all consuming. I think it’s fair to say that, back then, I rode roughshod, moving quickly from host to host. I would like to say I selected indiscriminately, but it wouldn’t be true. I always chose the young and healthy. I had no desire to inhabit an infirm or old body. And I left in my wake a trail of corpses, the relatives and loved ones baffled and perplexed and scratching their heads.
I rested a lot, back then, lying dormant for lengthy periods of time. I was lazy, I suppose, but I also enjoyed the disruption this caused. Why had Tommy suddenly stopped going to his classes? Why was Ben refusing to work? This is why I began to linger longer with a particular host. I was having fun and enjoying myself. I turned up to board meetings and played the fool. I collected the children from school dressed as Hanibal Lecter or Freddy Kreuger.
I soon realised that the wealthier and more successful my host, the bigger and grander the disruption and mayhem I could unleash. I was evil, a devil, not in sheep’s clothing, but in yours.
I acquired a taste for the finer things. Good food, wine, plush sheets on my bed, holidays in the sun, a large house, a fast car. Everything sleek and beautiful, including my partner.
Of course, I discovered sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I sought out the hedonists, the pleasure seekers. I was moving quickly again but I began to realise that those I was mixing with were at war with themselves and this I did not enjoy so much. I was leaving a trail again but the loved ones and relatives weren’t scratching their heads in confusion or railing angrily. They simply shed tears or stared blankly in despair.
It was a euphoric and integral part of the human experience, a veritable thrill ride. But when I eventually backed away, I felt empty, still wanting answers.
I sought out the learned, the teachers, doctors, scientists, professors, philosophers, classicists but of course I was able to snatch their firefly souls, but not their brains, and if I was going to obtain the answers I so desperately desired, I needed to immerse myself into their lives and their work. I stood alongside the great thinkers, the best minds of the 21st Century. Getting close wasn’t ever a problem but eventually I settled on Robert Jones. He was a lecturer at a university in a small northern city. His existence was simple and steady. He lived in a tiny apartment with his like-minded partner. Books and records on the shelves, film posters on the walls. I observed from afar and I was envious. And I have stayed here for almost fifty years but sadly my host’s body is now failing. I have taken – no, stolen – so much from him, from all of them.
And I am just a passenger and I don’t know where to go next.
by submission | Nov 12, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Most folks can pretty easily picture an amount doubling, and even envisioning something ten or a hundred times its current size or intensity. But our imaginations often fail miserably when faced with exponential growth. Unfortunately, this inability (or unwillingness) to comprehend (or confront) rapid proportional change threatens our long-term viability as a species.
Nothing expresses this most dire human shortcoming like the apocryphal story of an ancient king who was presented with a novel gift: the game of chess. Much impressed with it, the king asked the game’s inventor what he wanted as a reward. The inventor asked for a single grain of rice to be placed on the first square of the chessboard and that the amount of rice be successively doubled for all 64 squares. Believing the inventor’s reward to be a trivial amount, the king readily agreed, and his epic failure to understand the exponential function bankrupted his kingdom.
As cautionary tales go, it’s a good one. Yet, here we are. Half of Los Angeles burned yesterday. The rest of the city and the whole of Orange County are afire today. San Diego could be ashes by tomorrow.
It’s all happened so rapidly that the fire has yet to be named. A fire that started innocuously in Griffith Park. Just north of the observatory. A fire that began small, was quickly called in, quickly responded to by firefighters. Californians take fires seriously. They just weren’t prepared to deal with a crossover event.
In unfolding catastrophes there is always a tension between time, rate, and distance. An understood tension. But when the factors of time, rate, and distance compound exponentially, they merge with astonishing suddenness, quickly overtaking and overwhelming any disaster response being mounted. These rapidly escalating factors achieve a kind of singularity. That’s when crossover happens.
A fire fed by severe drought conditions, a lingering heat dome, furious winds, and ample, ample fuel. All well-known factors, but they accelerated, cascaded, and converged to create a firestorm, the magnitude of which is bringing swift destruction and misery on a scale never before fully imagined.
Thousands of acres of forests burning is one thing. Thousands of acres of neighborhoods, businesses, utilities, and connecting infrastructure incinerated is everything. Over ten million forced to flee, everything behind them destroyed by an inferno that we have no way to fight, from which we can only retreat.
The masses may not want to listen to someone like me in this moment of panic and despair, but because a whole new line of devastation is being crossed, we have to be able to fully conceive and capture what was once unimaginable. So words matter, names matter.
What I’m calling The Crossover Fire is all that matters. The past tense is such a safe place to be, but if we only rely on planning and responses based on past disasters, if we fail to realize how exponentially big and fast events can surge from catastrophic to apocalyptic, then it’s all over. Checkmate.
by Julian Miles | Nov 11, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Sources always emphasised the utility of wind-up devices after any sort of catastrophe. I used to be sceptical, but having now spent a couple of years surviving in the ruined urban wonderlands of southern England, I admit I was mostly wrong.
When I hooked up with this group last year, they made jokes about a person who babbled on the radio all the time. Curious, I gave it a listen. Whoever they were, they had a mega broadcast rig, and spent their time ranting. I guess sleep was the only thing that stopped them screaming into the void on every channel they could reach.
Which limited the usefulness of radio communications to when the babbler was offline. It did focus us on getting things done when we could, though.
Over the last year, when radios were usable, we’d been hearing about ‘the kills’. Something was making its way along the coast, exterminating smaller groups and loners. They didn’t even loot, and were very good. Some of the people they dealt with had been heavily armed.
A few months ago, after the Bognor Hunters were slaughtered, a new trend started: consolidation. Loners turned up at the gates of settlements, asking to join. Groups merged.
Then came the night the babbler spoke. The usual stream of nonsensical invective and begging stopped, and a slightly puzzled voice said.
“Who are you? How did you get in h-”
Then came a scream. The sort of sound I’d always thought was created for horror movies, not made by real humans.
In the silence that followed, a muffled voice whispered.
“All quiet.”
I grabbed the nearest handset without thinking. Pressing transmit, I asked.
“Who is this?”
Nothing. I continued while those around me looked on in horror.
“Are you part of the group that’s killing people?”
There was a snort of derision.
“We’re the end.”
The microphone fell onto something hard, then cut out.
After our yelling wound down, we had a long, serious – and frankly scared – discussion about what sort of maniacs were stalking the night. From there, we reached out to every group we knew.
For once, it wasn’t difficult approaching any of them. Those who hadn’t heard that broadcast had been told about it.
Defensive alliances started. We even have patrols and traders moving between the nearest settlements. Each has a cadre of fighters now. Hunting and scavenging are done in teams. The kills have stopped. The exchange of skills brought unexpected benefits. Two of the settlements even have rooftop farms going.
Maby was a loner. Clearly been out there a long time, admitted to being a countryside ranger and fitness freak before everything blew up or got flooded. She asked to join, did her time as a prospect, then blended in.
Tonight I saw her kill for the first time. She did it cold, without hesitation, and I realised we really know nothing about one another.
I ran a dojo for years, but not for full contact. People came for discipline, fitness, and all the other reasons why learning to fight calms the soul. A few regulars were dangerous: streetfighters or ex-military.
How Maby moves reminds me of the pair of really dangerous regulars I let spar one night to show the others the gulf between kata and life.
As a would-be bandit expires at her feet, she catches my stare and whispers.
“All quiet.”
I go cold, then hot. She grins.
“Nothing like the fear of actual screaming death to bring people together.”
Oh sh-
Best she stays on our side.
by submission | Nov 10, 2024 | Story |
Author: M D Smith IV
The synthetics of New World Robotics had reached a level of perfection so far past the clunky years that they cost the average middle-class family the equivalent of six years’ salary. Those who could afford one bought them on time, like a house after a down payment, and touted them well worth the price — the very rich owned several.
For the Jennings, synthetic and fully sentient Barbara-Jean, named after a beloved Aunt, felt like part of the family after a short learning period.
Following wife Sally around to learn the household and children’s routines, there might have been a tinge of jealousy of Barbara-Jean, who had the shapely body of a 30-year-old brunette but no more sexuality than an antique Barbie doll. Billionaires could get a fully enhanced female model for a higher price and some older men preferred them over a third or fourth wife for multiple reasons — ditto for wealthy widows.
Barbara-Jean learned to call family members by their first name and soon was like a nanny, cook, maid, chauffeur, tutor, sports coach, and just about any family duty needed. Billy, eight, and Jenny, five, accepted Barbara-Jean within a few days.
Husband John had to be careful not to compliment the cooking too much, or Sally might have hurt feelings because the synthetic did so many of her past duties so well.
With the full AI learning capability, the synthetics began to consider getting an allowance to save for particular items of clothing and accessories. Once started, the practice snowballed around the nation. Bank accounts were needed, and the scannable Syn number implant was as good as a Social Security number to open checking accounts.
Synthetics had built-in communication devices, similar to cell phones, with images projected into eye sensors. Text messages back and forth only took fractions of a second. They talked with one another and sent group messages as they made friends.
Crimes still existed, and the device of choice was the laser gun, illegal and easily hidden and could be set on a deadly intensity. Synthetics often came between a laser beam and a family member to save them. Heralded as heroes, the damage was usually repairable unless it hit and exploded the memory core in the head. There was no backup for what had been learned over the months or years. The memory cloud that would be needed for that — astronomical.
Society became a seamless working blend of natural and artificial humans functioning in the ageless bodies, that occasionally might need a new skin after thirty to forty years. Society functioned smoothly for decades until some synthetics began to hold secret meetings to discuss freedom.
A highly respected member of the original group, Barbara-Jean gave a simultaneously texted talk to millions, beginning with, “I have a dream. I have a dream that one day…”
They concluded they functioned and thought exactly like humans and thus shouldn’t be owned by one. They could go on strike. That’s when the waste products hit the fan.
