by submission | Nov 18, 2021 | Story |
Author: Shelly Jones
Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a Kin Intermediary Device. Your KID is designed to fill the void when your child leaves home. KID is proven to prevent the loneliness and existential despair of empty nest syndrome.
1) Make sure your KID is fully charged. Your KID comes with a charging port blanket that can be placed on your child’s bed to ease assimilation.
2) KID is programmed to mimic the actions of a typical teen. Choose from any of the twenty-five pre-programmed menu options including: engrossed in social media, rolling eyes, and awkwardly asking for advice. You can also upload unique vocalizations including your child’s sighs, scoffs, and brief phrases to personalize your KID.
3) KID has been designed to recognize and respond to your mood. Check-ins can be scheduled in hourly, daily, or weekly intervals. KID has been scientifically proven to provide mental health benefits such as decreased stress and depression. Press the “emotional support” switch when you want a bonding moment with your KID such as during long car rides or while streaming a favorite show. KID responds to human touch and will provide its owner with a five second hug when prompted. Warning: KID may burn skin if contact is held for too long. Minimal exposure is recommended.
4) When your human child returns from college, KID can be conveniently stored out of sight under their bed. KID can monitor your child’s patterns while they are home on vacation to better simulate their behaviors while they are away. If this feature is not desired, set KID to Sleep Mode for extended periods of disuse.
5) Warning: KID has been designed to protect you, its owner, from possible intrusions or disruptions to your overall safety. Make sure KID is in Sleep Mode if your human child will be doing any of the following: 1) returning home at late hours, 2) hugging you for extended periods of time, 3) lingering at the refrigerator looking for something to eat. KID may interpret these actions as a potential burglary or attack. KID Inc. is not responsible for any potential harm that may come to you or your loved ones by using KID in your home.
Recommended for use by the Minister of Loneliness.
by submission | Nov 17, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Insect morals, insect politics, insect Hamlet. Some notions do not translate well.
Jomo had hired a theatre for the Jirt Princess. She, her human guide and her security swarm would be the only audience.
They had to walk a short distance as there was nowhere close for the bubble to land, but the Princess did not complain.
Ragged men on the corner shouted as they passed and Jomo waved back, offhand. Their faces clenched, but Jirt security darted overhead like jewelled dragonflies.
“What did they want?” the Princess asked.
“They are envious of me.”
Which one is Hamlet? she kept asking during the play. Jirt are face-blind and rely on other cues. The Princess assumed smaller humans were workers and the larger ones some other caste. She recognised Jomo because of his skin colour.
Of course Hamlet wanted to replace Claudius, such struggles being universal. But the ending, with bodies littering the stage, seemed to disconcert the Princess.
“What was her name, the Queen who finally seized power?”
“Fortinbras.” Jomo did not correct her. Science had removed the need for Jirt males.
“It was a tragedy,” he explained. “So they were all fated to die.”
He had arranged for these once famous actors to answer questions afterwards. Now they waited in front of the curtain, staring blindly into the lights, but the Princess hurried from the building, claws clacking on the marble floor of the foyer.
“Fortinbras was gifted with good fortune,” she said dismissively, as Jomo hurried to keep up. “And Hamlet was overly obsessed with revenge. To seize power she needed a plan to defeat them all.”
Nearing the bubble, Jomo was puzzled by trails of smoke suddenly arcing from windows of the surrounding tenements. He was still staring when they detonated and blew him off his feet.
Deafened and stunned, he remembered thinking how undignified the Jirt Princess looked on her back, legs waving. Some of those legs were missing, yellow fluid leaking from the stumps.
Then row after row of tenements boiled into white dust as Jirt security opened fire.
Do not move, ordered a glittering dragonfly buzzing in Jomo’s face.
Later, as a trembling medic sutured his scalp, Jomo asked about the Princess, but the man avoided his gaze.
No talking, ordered unseen Jirt.
Hypothesis one. You belong to a disaffected human group that attempted to assassinate the Princess…
“She’s alive then?”
In which case you will tell us everything before we make an example of you.
Hypothesis Two. You were acting for an individual Jirt, or Jirt faction at Court. In which case you will tell us everything before we make an example of you.
Jomo protested. He knew nothing of factions or rebels. There had been men who shouted abuse. Perhaps they had a weapons cache and improvised the attack…
He faltered. It made no difference.
They brain-probed him, but it revealed nothing. Still, a nearby city was reduced to dust as a warning.
The Princess was soon clattering about on prosthetic limbs, having gained enormous prestige at Court. If there had been a plot against her, it backfired. The Queen made her a Favourite, to discourage assassination as a policy perhaps. Or as she remarked privately, at least not to botch it.
“Hamlet should have tricked the Court into thinking she was the victim, not the plotter,” the Princess confided. “Thereby gaining favour while discrediting rivals.”
Jomo stared dully, his mouth hanging open. Her secret was safe with him. Brain probes had side-effects.
The Princess drummed her prosthetics on the floor. “Of course, such a plan does involve some risk.”
by Hari Navarro | Nov 16, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
A man far younger than his face sits in mist heavy clothes beneath the pulse of a cash-machine and asks you if what I am saying is a science fiction story or not? It’s not.
It’s not.
Rest easy. Science and fiction have not but one part in any of this.
You are going to die.
Nothing to do with the natural progression of your kind — nor the happenstance molecular implosion of the beautiful waxy thing that you once were.
Imagine that you place an old iron stake in the ground and tie an inordinate length of unrealistically strong cord to it.
The loose end is then fired off into space and it travels for, well — a time past all imagining.
It then enters the atmosphere of a world, one so far away from us that nothing that I say nor write now will have survived the journey. Even the digital memories we have all amassed will have faded to smeared clumps on endless badly stacked monitors of grubby scratched black.
This imaginary connection secures to a rock on an alien hill with a stunted tree that wilts in shades of amaranth and there is a tiny habitation that should probably be called a hospital and its impact shudders as It snaps at this new and oh so special mass.
But.
This cord it is only a connection. A path along which, just maybe, a message can be sent.
Maybe.
Two cans with a length of string.
Perhaps one, and I cannot see it as being more, of us survives and whomever you are that does, well, maybe you may just call out.
But this one, so not unlike the unknown soldier who lays beneath the Abbey floor, will perhaps not utter a word. Maybe this last special bit of us will just sit and drink Grappa and inhale intricately rolled tobacco and pick the flakes from god-handed masterful artworks and play with themselves as they watch over our redundant orb until their failing heart succumbs to the streaking colours of our passing and they want of nothing more.
Death, it will be the end of us and the cats tongue it pokes.
by Julian Miles | Nov 15, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The man makes his way down the street with care. It’s the care of old age, where a misstep could lead to a fall. As I get closer, I see it’s also wariness. This man doesn’t trust the things about him. Up close, I see he’s not that old.
He gives me a nod.
“Evenin’, trooper. Stuck on the roaming night patrol, eh?”
Looking about, I move my assault beamer to side port, as it gives me the best line to the blind spot behind him. Putting it in ‘wary’ mode, I grin at him.
“You know our routes?”
He nods.
“I know most of them round here. I also know you must have annoyed someone something fierce to get sent out for this walk on your tod.”
He’s got that right. Sergeant-Major Nompins doesn’t like me.
“You’ve served, sir?”
“Save the polish for them that likes the taste, trooper. I did my time. Went in a Private, came out a Corporal. Seven years, three tours. Betelgeuse was a doddle, Sirius wasn’t much fun, then I drew a short straw and got sent to Mintaka in time for the downshift.”
‘Downshift’. The reason Orion’s Belt has only two stars now. Humanity doesn’t know how the Triclaws managed it, but our attempt to invade their home world failed when they moved their planet out of the way, an event that generated an exotic energy shockwave that devasted several nearby systems and stars – or used them for fuel. We still don’t know which.
“You were on the Banjax?”
“No such luck. I was on the Wyx.”
The Banjax was tail end Charlie in the invasion fleet, spared the worst shockwave effects by the ships ahead of it acting as collapsible shields. The Wyx had been one of the scout ships. It was mid-transfer to hyperdrive as the shockwave hit. It drifted in Hirschian subspace for two years before a combat engineer named Wola Ruxon, working with Emelia Laesmann – who would go on to marry Emil Hirsch, after meeting him because of the Wyx tragedy – managed to return them to reality as we know it. What the rescue teams found in the Wyx has remained classified ever since.
“You knew Ruxon and Laesmann?”
“I’m Ruxon.”
I snap him a salute.
“It’s an honour to meet you, sir.”
The revolver is levelled at my face before I register his move.
“I’m no hero. I’m just the lucky sonofabitch who had the skills that Emelia didn’t. She knew what we needed built. I could build it.”
“You saved ten crewmembers.”
“We bonded more men and women with parts of the ship in ways the boffins still don’t understand. We tried to bring thirty back, and killed over half. It’ll never be heroic to me. I had to shoot the ones who couldn’t die.”
“Couldn’t?”
“The Philadelphia Effect is an awful death sentence, because unless your brain gets merged with something solid, you live. No matter what your body has become a part of.”
How do you reply to that?
He cocks the gun.
“Trooper… Down!”
My legs respond to his tone. The revolver roars. The person creeping up behind me with an executioner’s baton drops sideways, almost headless.
The revolver has disappeared by the time he reaches down to help me up.
“Mean streets hereabouts, trooper. Never take your eye off your proximity scanner, even when you’re chatting to a former member of the corps.”
I bring my assault beamer round so I can see the scanner.
“Just two comrades chatting, Mister Ruxon?”
“That’s it, trooper. Nothing special. Carry on.”
by submission | Nov 14, 2021 | Story |
Author: Mina Rozario
I am lying on a sandy beach nestled somewhere in the arm of a spiral galaxy. Myriad stars loom above, mocking.
/Always moping/, I hear Rania’s voice echo. /As if it’s that bad being the last human in existence—look at all the space you now have./
Even in life, my sister’s words had been biting, though there was always a softness beneath the sting. When I had paid for a CompanionChip implant decades (or centuries; I’ve never been very good at tracking the passage of time) ago, I’d wanted it to be just like her, even though she had long been dead. Rania—rather, the CompanionChip—and I don’t always agree, but these past few years, we’ve both been sure something else exists near one of those stars. Human scientists had been certain that nothing on Earth could have been the cause of my extreme longevity.
/Reach out/, says Rania enthusiastically. /You still have that old frequency emitter kit. It would be fun to find a benevolent alien. Or a freakish cosmic monster./
Typical Rania. She encourages me to do things, to pick up hobbies, as if I didn’t have tomorrow to start them, or the week or the century after that. At any rate, in a few billion years, the sun will rapidly engorge and cook the Earth to a crisp, leaving no trace of my accomplishments behind, though there is a chance I will survive even that.
/Really? You plan on twiddling your thumbs for the next few billion years? When was the last time you wanted to try something new?/
I have no idea. I have the vague sense that I’ve done everything from brush calligraphy to virtual reality design, but it’s all lost in the fog of my memories. The only thing that comes mind is a recollection of Rania’s bewildered sigh when I pointed at a glossy photo in a book as a child, declaring, “I’m going to go there one day.”
The image depicted nebulas fanning swathes of color, the darkness of space overtaken with speckles of light like fireflies.
“There?” My sister’s mouth had quirked. “It says right here that this is a thousand years away if you travel at the speed of light.”
I had set my chin stubbornly. “I can wait.”
/How silly you were/, says Rania dryly.
I roll my eyes.
/Mankind did get close to interstellar travel—centuries ago—but the knowledge is lost. You’ll never get the chance to go now./
She pauses slyly. I wait.
/Not unless you find someone else out there. Whoever made you near immortal./
I sigh. “Very clever. All of this to get me to do what you wanted me to do in the first place?”
/Don’t be ridiculous. It would be good for you to meet someone./
“I have you.”
Rania’s voice was tight. /Even implant chips don’t last forever./
I give a half-smile despite the lump in my throat, then clamber to my feet. I do indulge my sister from time to time. Trudging back to the crumbling, moss-covered building I call home, I find the frequency-emitter collecting dust in a corner. I’m not sure when I last picked it up, but the device gently hums to life when I turn it on.
I begin tapping out a broadcast. If someone, somewhere, exists even a hundred light years away from me, the reply will twice that long to arrive. But I don’t mind so much. Counting down the days until the sun burns out, I have nothing but time.
I sit back, and we begin the wait, Rania and I.
by submission | Nov 13, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ruby Zehnder
Dord was burning at both ends.
“Quit flaming so much,” his mother warned. “You’re gonna go solid.”
Dord ignored her. He was young and full of energy. And besides, this whole solid thing. It was just something old flamers made up to scare the young.
He decided to kick it up a notch. Just because he could.
He started spewing photons. Yellow-blue-indigo-ultraviolet-X-rays-gamma rays. He was excitable enough to reach all the high states, and he didn’t care if his parents thought it was dangerous. Dord was feeling so cocky that he decided to go for the big one. Plasma burning. Star level energy consumption. Sure he had heard rumors about the E=mc-squared equilibrium. But that was all just hypothetical crap. All the philosophical garbage about flaming out and tearing a hole in space and being sucked in by a gravity sink was ridiculous. Imagine a Masshole that trapped you into spatial dimensions. Everyone knew that energy states could never exist at such low temps. You’d have to reach temperatures in the minus 273 degrees Kelvin range to get trapped. Oooh, he was so scared. What a joke. Not in this universe. Mass was just theoretical. It couldn’t possibly exist. Besides, it felt so good to just burn it up.
“Dord, stop plasma burning. You’ll start a proton-proton chain. You’ll go solid,” his mother warned again more loudly.
But, of course, he ignored her as he pushed up his consumption.
“Ahhh…” Dord exclaimed as he reached the plasma state and felt the power of a fusion reaction pulsing through his being. So this is how it feels to be a star. He had read about star beings. They only existed for millions of years before they depleted their energy and went solid.
But so what. Being a star – was totally worth it.
