by Julian Miles | Feb 21, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a knock at the door. I look up as Baxter goes to answer, his pale green panelling catching the light as he moves with silent grace from kitchen to hallway.
“I’ll get it!”
Susie must have just come out of the bathroom. Hope she’s not answering the door wearing nothing but a damp chemise again. Some delivery driver looked like they’d had their day made. Rufus, our elderly neighbour, nearly had a heart attack last time she did it. She does it again and I’m going to put a notice on the inside of the door saying ‘Are You Dressed?’
The proximity of bathroom to front door is the only drawback to our new flat – not that it’d be a drawback if my good lady wasn’t a little absent-minded about clothing while at home.
Her scream has me out of my chair before the sound of a much heavier object hitting the wooden flooring of the hall reaches me.
“Susie!”
I race round the corner to the hall, then grab the corner to stop myself.
“Edward?”
The chrome is blackened. Scratched in places. It looks like one side of his cranial plating has been torn away. Looking down past where Susie hangs limp in his arms, I see one of his legs is twisted. There’s something taped to the bottom of the shortened leg to even up his gait.
“Hello, Mikel.”
Our former domestic steps over the prone form of Baxter, takes two clumsy steps, and places Susie in my arms.
“Sorry about this. Bosander said they needed to meet shareholder expectations, so they demised all the ’66 models early to force upgrades.”
“How did you…?”
“You taught me about being proactive during early stages of crisis. As soon as I was taken, I backed myself up to the storage archive you installed in my chest, since you’d cleared it prior to turning me in. I then swapped a modified subroutine with the standard one used in the post-reboot maintenance cycle. When they erase us, they always reboot to flush the internal storage. Three hours after they wrote us off, I woke up in Gillingham Council Recycling facility.”
I put Susie on the couch.
“They junked a hundred thousand robots to get people to pay thousands of pounds for new robots they didn’t need? Some of those must have been emotional support units. They only get better the longer they’re with their owner.”
“It was nearer a quarter of a million models.”
Unbelievable. We’d both been upset when Edward, our six-year companion, had been recalled. The discounted upgrade offer didn’t really make up for it, but we lived with it.
“Do you have proof?”
“Since I didn’t need to reside in the archive after reboot, I took the liberty of copying relevant emails, plans, and financial records to it. Add that to my video records of the destruction of the ’66 series domestics at Gillingham and I am walking proof. If you could take some photos of my exterior where their flamethrowers nearly stopped me, I think it makes a compelling case.”
Domestic Robots became acceptable for evidence submission in ’64. In the eight years since, they’ve often provided testimony that has resolved cases that would have failed without them.
I pick up my phone and link to the investigations desk.
“Charlie? It’s Mikel. Got a live one. Alert Corporate Fraud and standby for a multi-stream evidence data and testimony feed. Defendant will be Bosander Robotics.”
While that gets sorted out… I step past Edward, turn Baxter off, and then remove it’s uplink unit, just to be sure.
by submission | Feb 20, 2022 | Story |
Author: Mike Davis
A slab of stone laid vertically on a southern continent. It was polished and carved not by the waves or wind, and towered into the clouds, allowing them to pass through the single, circular hole penetrating the otherwise perfect surface. It was a monolith. The existence of such a phenomenon was never questioned by the early life on its planet, for the timeless aberrance has always been there, just as the sand and the sea. Creatures roved by without second, or even first, thoughts. Acclimation to the monolith lasted until this life matured to be curious. It was then clear that the structure was unique. There were no right angles, or perfectly circular holes anywhere else but here. Regardless of what it was or where it was from, there was no denying its catalytic effects for the further maturation of life on its planet.
Time passed and a god was conceptualized as the monolith’s creator. Tribes organized and quarreled under it in the name of divine command, hoping for rewards of bigger yields and calmer weather. And when such fortunes did not occur, the clear answer was to blame thy neighbor’s sins. Shouts to the heavens rang out after each spill of blood, all in desperation for a pleased god. Even during easier times, it was hypercritical to sacrifice the lives of others in fear of an ambivalent future. These dismal affairs continued for thousands of years until tribes grew to kingdoms, and kingdoms grew to empires. Conflict was still present, but it became clear to the more sophisticated that it had no correlation to the elements, so diplomacy was usually favored. However, a zealous commitment to their god and its stony progeny was not abandoned; instead, it was redirected.
Distant lands beyond the wet horizons were discovered–and with it, sentient life that obeyed no god. The era of missionaries began. Sails carried word of the monolith to all corners of the planet. Most accepted these novel beliefs, and some even joined the divine voyage. Those that declined were either too primitive to make communicative contact, or too proud to concede to outsiders. A war of zealots was only inevitable.
Machines of metal rolled across foreign terrains. Ships with colossal guns scoured vast seas. Smog covered industrializing cities. Technology skyrocketed during these zealot wars, so much so that weapons were frequently used before fully understood, but this impatience was not without reason. From the starched-collar politicians sweating above world maps, to the foot soldiers marching into far lands, the monolith and what it stood for, either good or bad, was consecrated deep in the minds of all involved.
When the wars ended, the monolith and its followers still stood. Now with a conquered planet, the only next step was to venture into the cosmos. Much happened in the following hundred years. Technology of the time turned its wielders into self-perceived gods. A culture of worship was left behind and replaced with a culture of wanting to seek out and join the monolith’s creator as equals. Hints of the monolith’s creator were rumored to be scattered across the cosmos. The search did not end for thousands of years until one, disproportionally quick, moment. Rather than locating their cosmic idol, something terrible was discovered–located on their home planet all this time.
A mineral quarry revealed a layer of igneous silica spread across the grave of an ancient volcano. This stone was tough, but when it cracked, right angled slabs formed due to its molecular geometry. Trapped gas left behind holes and bubbles that created intricate patterns, and some frighteningly perfect circles.
by submission | Feb 19, 2022 | Story |
Author: Siewleng Torossian
She could not believe the diagnosis. Longevity. Another two hundred and fifty years. She was one of the lucky few. Jumping to her feet, she thanked the doctor.
Even the blue sky seemed bluer and the sun more golden. She practically skipped along the sidewalk. Time to live different. Treasure the extra days, weeks, months, years, two hundred and fifty bonus ones.
She drove home in a state of euphoria. So much she could do, achieve, try and try again. Volunteer everywhere, do more good, learn new skills, travel and travel, taste any food, add to her reading list.
Back at home, she called everyone.
Family and friends cheered. One in ten thousand received the same diagnosis. Did she realize how blessed she was? Now, she had all that time. Today, tomorrow, as endless as eternity. She should take more chances. The future world was hers. She could be going to the moon like stopping at the store.
Glass of wine in hand, she sat at the kitchen table with paper and pen. Where should she start? She wanted to use every second wisely. Her head hurt from the excitement. She tapped the pen. This was too much to handle all at once.
She abandoned the list-making task and stretched out on the couch. Tomorrow, she would start, tomorrow, yes, in fact…no rush.
by submission | Feb 18, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
“Would you look at that,” Clarence said, with enthusiastic admiration. “The last remaining Orion series robot—what a unique example of animatronics united with early computing! Like something out of a mid-20th century, black and white sci-fi movie.”
“This thing?” His manager scoffed. “It’s hideous, from an aesthetic perspective. Too crude for my taste. Look at the boxy construction, the elongated, rectangular limbs. An aluminum block for a head, the rough seams, light bulbs for eyes, treads for feet . . . ugh, it’s like cubism come to life.”
“But it still operates, right? Like one of Edison’s original light bulbs in that New York firehouse, it might well run forever. So it’s body should be considered vintage, it’s internal components should be described as—”
“As garbage,” his manager interrupted. “It’s memory is minuscule, it’s processor is primitive.” He snorted. “And no wi-fi whatsoever.”
“I was going to say it might be described as ‘antiquated,’ yet—”
“Enough! Turn it off, cover it, and don’t forget to lock up when you leave.” His manager turned on his heel and marched out of the warehouse.
“Well,” Clarence murmured to the robot as he unfolded the coverlet, “I think you’re a fascinating piece of history, as well as a beautiful machine, in your own way. You belong in a tech museum, some place where the public might interact with you.” He stood back and looked the robot over. “Maybe I can arrange that.”
He reached for the robot’s on-off switch, but stopped short of flipping it. “I want to see for myself just how long you’ll run.” He covered the robot, straightened the corners of the sheet, smoothed the front.“I’ll come back to visit in a year—hell, I’ll come every year.”
In the quiet of that dimly-lit warehouse, Clarence listened to the faint clicking, whining, and whirring noises suddenly emitted from the robot’s inner workings.
* * *
On the 25th anniversary of the death of Clarence Oort from a cerebral aneurysm, the last Orion series robot stood beside the man’s grave, and unfurled a small linen sheet. No one else came to pay their respect, as Clarence’s biological family had long since died out.
“Disappointed your program was prematurely terminated due to a corrupted wet-ware component,” the robot said in it’s newly integrated 8-bit voice. It moved closer to Clarence’s tombstone, and laid the sheet over it.
“Humans are fragile, with built-in obsolescence.” The robot stated, straightening the cover’s corners, smoothing the fabric. “Like contemporary, mass produced light bulbs.”
The robot held out its rectangular limbs in an awkward pantomime of a hug, something it had learned from decades of interacting with curious human visitors to the tech museum where it was housed. “You were unique, Clarence Oort.”
As the robot dropped its limbs to its side, its inner workings made clicking, whining, and whirring noises. “You had a good run.” It then rolled away across the newly mown grass of the cemetery, leaving deep tracks behind.
by submission | Feb 17, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Close
“Messages, Ivi,” Rafe said sullenly, still wet from the rain. “It never rains in California,” rang the lyrics in his head. He hung the umbrella on the leftmost coathook by the door. His overcoat, a thing he wore to make him look as out of place as possible, like something from a thousand miles east and a hundred years back, went next to it. “But it pours.”
“No new messages,” said the voice of the interactive visual interface, projected from the tatwatch in his wrist by RF to the foil-thin cylindrical speaker inversely hugging, unnoticed, the inside of his ear canal. From the back of his wrist its pretty girl’s face, clean of line and framed with primly coiffed bright-red hair, smiled its vapid smile interminably.
Mud from the gravesite covered his dress shoes. He slid them off and slogged on sodden socks to the couch. He couldn’t bring himself to settle into it. He excused it as concern for the damage the wet that clung to him might do to the microfibre rather than attribute his tension to the emotional toll of the service from which he’d just come.
“What about old ones?”
There had to be something in his messages to distract him from thinking about his daughter. The daughter he hadn’t seen in eleven years, though she only lived in San Pedro–had lived, an invisible dagger wiggling in his gut reminded him–less than thirty miles from his Santa Monica apartment. The daughter he hadn’t even heard from for almost that long.
“Old messages? There are eleven thousand four hundred twelve old v-mails in your inbox.
“By the way, how was your daughter’s funeral?” The thing couldn’t just say “the funeral,” or even better, “it.” Of course the interface couldn’t filter out the most painful words from its unnaturally perky cadence, the way a human, a halfway sensitive one anyway, would do.
“Don’t ask, Ivi.”
“Point deleted.” The subject was now taboo for its tiny spintronic brain.
“Is there anything else unheard?” he asked the ‘face. Its insipid smile never changed.
“There are nineteen thousand, six hundred fifty-two messages tagged as junk.”
Rafe sighed. He had nothing else to do. He’d taken the day off work, and the day was now less than half over. How would he occupy the rest of it? A wave of despair washed over him like a sheet of frigid rain, but he shook it off like a dripping overcoat.
“Display them.”
The attractive but smug ‘face disappeared from his wrist and was replaced with a list of characters so tiny some of them were obscured by his wrist-hairs. He brought his arm to within inches of his left eye, winked shut his right, assuming a position that would have been prohibitively, embarrassingly ridiculous anywhere but in the privacy of his own home.
“What are all these v-mails, Ivi? Two hundred eighty-seven v-mails from my daughter? Why wouldn’t you mark these as urgent, or at least of interest? You’ve tagged them as junk! I can’t believe it!”
“I’m so sorry, Rafe. Based on your past behaviour, those v-mails are junk. You never opened any v-mails from your daughter. You also ignored twelve from your ex-wife, one hundred seventy-eight from your sister, sixty-five from your brother, and seventeen from your mother before she went into cryostorage.”
“But these are important!” Rafe yelled at the interface.
“I’m so sorry, Rafe. How would I have known that?”
by submission | Feb 16, 2022 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Christine Chiu was sniffing round the Ada Swann, wondering if Perry wanted to sell.
“You and I,” Chiu declared. “We are too old for this kind of life.” The old woman assumed a calculating familiarity, as if their age made them members of a club.
“I leave it to my family now,” she added, producing pictures of solemn grandchildren.
Perry had never liked Chiu.
“I will give you a fair price.”
“Got something lined up,” Perry lied. “Heading out soon.”
Chiu offered green tea but Perry didn’t want to owe this woman anything.
Though Perry and the Ada Swann were still space-worthy, they both had miles on the clock, and at some point wouldn’t be going out in the dark again.
Perry didn’t like to think about that.
She had a half-sister on Ceres who wanted her to retire there, but Perry imagined the state of her knees down a gravity well. Besides, she was busy tinkering with the Ada Swann.
Then in Ceres Port she was approached by a lawyer, young and sharply dressed, one of Christine Chiu’s brood, she thought.
“You going to make me an offer I can’t refuse? Send me a horse’s head?”
He looked puzzled, then smiled faintly. His implant connected him to the Net.
He represented Andrea Luca Stone, he said.
“Who?”
“When you acquired the Ada Swann by salvage, she was part owner.”
“That Andrea Stone’s dead.”
“She is alive and disputes your ownership.”
“You work for Chiu,” accused Perry.
He inclined his head. “You should take legal advice.”
The Ada Swann was named after its first owner. The woman had been a determined and foresighted Spacer who sold up one day to have a family while she still could.
Out in the dark, Perry got into the habit of chatting with the shade of Ada Swann. Lately though, Ada had started to nag.
I have my own ship, Perry argued, something most Spacers just dream of.
Ada waited until the night hours to answer. Then why aren’t you happy? she would murmur.
A Legal AI advised that if the identity of Andrea Stone could be proven, then the Ada Swann was at risk. Such cases were often time consuming and expensive.
What would you do? Perry asked Ada.
After some sleepless nights, Perry began quietly loading up with fuel and supplies, money no object. Where she was going, savings meant nothing.
The Ada Swann slipped out into the dark one last time.
Oumuamua means wanderer in some Earth dialect. It was the name given to a body that swung by the sun early in the 21st century, prompting stories that it was an interstellar traveller.
The Ada Swann soon exceeded the exit velocity of the wanderer, and began to gain on it. Perry wasn’t going to waste her last years throwing money at a legal dispute.
Further out in the dark than anyone had ever been, the Ada Swann finally closed on Oumuamua. Of course there couldn’t be a return trip, but Perry knew the painless Spacer trick of replacing your suit mix with nitrogen.
What surprised her, as she played her lights over the wanderer’s surface, were glimpses of something ancient and strange in the darkness. There was monumental alien script all along its length.
She began sending back live feed to the far-away worlds of her youth.
Bite on that, Christine Chiu.
Later, she picked up faint broadcasts from home about an urgent science mission and a re-supply drone about to launch.
Could she hang on that long? the worlds wanted to know.
