by Julian Miles | Oct 11, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
They’re sitting in the middle of the road, a bearded older gentleman facing a young girl in a saffron tutu. He’s sitting cross-legged, she’s kneeling. His hands move as he talks, face a picture of concern. She’s gazing at the ground, head down, dirty blonde curls stirring slightly in the freshening breeze.
I can see the woman who called us behind the controls of the flitcar stopped a coach-length beyond the pair of them. She’s beckoning to me, then pointing at them.
“Control, this is A614298. Please connect me to the reporting unit for Incident BB14-8092.”
“Will do. Anything we need to prep for?”
“No. Just comms and the usual safeguards, please.”
There’s a click, then a ringtone. I see the woman tap her ear to pick up the call. It rings again. I see her pound on the dash. The ringtone stops abruptly.
“…oddamn stupid tech- Oh. Hello?”
“Good afternoon, ma’am. This is Officer Gonzales of the South East England Rapid Response Unit. You called in an emergency?”
“Oh, thank God. He’s got this girl in the middle of the street and is threatening the poor thing. There’s some useless plod just stood watching! It’s heart-breaking. Are you going to be here soon? If not, can’t you get him to step in?”
Always nice to be appreciated…
The guy makes a ‘wait a moment’ gesture to the girl. The other goes into his pocket.
“Oh god, I think he’s going for a knife. Isn’t there a riot drone you can send?”
Not that again.
The guy’s activated the personapad in his pocket. It links to my dutypad. I request IDs. Stepfather and daughter. Looks like she’s got medical issues, poor kid. My interference won’t help.
He pulls out an inhaler with an attached spacer.
“He’s offering her something! This is terrible. Just like you see on ‘Real People, Real Lies.’”
That well-known source of largely fictional ‘reliable’ information – including riot drones. I particularly liked their documentary entitled ‘The British Police Have Been Replaced by Androids’.
The woman is gesturing angrily at me.
The daughter slowly reaches for the inhaler.
“I have to save her. I’m going to ram him.”
Glad I asked for safeguards. I disable her flitcar.
She starts thumping on the dash again. There should be a big ‘Police Override’ banner flashing right where her fist is landing.
“My car’s died!”
She tries the door.
“I can’t get out!”
“Please stay calm, ma’am. We’re working on that.”
The father pantomimes how to use the inhaler properly. The daughter nods. She takes it from him and uses it, face a picture of concentration. Her hands slowly drop into her lap. A beaming smile spreads across her face. She looks about, then hands the inhaler back to him. He pulls a hydropouch from another pocket and indicates she should rinse her mouth.
She does so. Keeping the hydropouch clutched to her chest, she stands up and offers the other hand to him. He takes it. She grins and leans back. He stands up, grinning at her. They walk off, hand-in-hand.
Good luck to you both.
I enable the flitcar, noting the woman couldn’t flit over the pair because of a three-month aerial activity ban for ‘aggressive queue jumping’.
The flitcar pulls over next to me. She glares, then registers my name tag. This could be amusing.
“You related to Officer Gonzales of the South East England Rapid Response Unit?”
Best not to say anything. Just nod.
“He obviously inherited the balls and brains in your family.”
She accelerates away.
Always happy to help, ma’am.
by submission | Oct 10, 2021 | Story |
Author: Josie Gowler
“Snip, snip,” mutters Clarke.
“That makes a change from ‘guidance system deployed’”, I mutter, gazing down my microscope.
“Sarcasm, Matt? From you?” he replies.
“Breaks the tedium,” I shoot back.
“How can you get bored? We’re doing such exciting work.”
More editing, more clipping. It sounds sexy, but it isn’t: like most lab work it’s ninety-five percent dull. And the incubator shaker has developed an annoying squeak.
“We could gene edit Dave into having a personality.”
“Or politicians into being honest,” I say. Clarke raises an eyebrow. “What?” I respond. “I read the news too, you know.”
“Good. Means you can do that school group from Seattle this afternoon.”
“No, no, no,” I mutter. “No more dodo questions, please.”
“It’s your turn.”
“Fine,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure it isn’t my turn. “You can clear up those petri dishes in the sink before we get a lifeform we weren’t expecting.”
I holochat into the classroom of thirteen year-olds, ready with my spiel. “Hi kids, I’m the one who brings animals back from extinction.” I point my finger upwards and a nice graphic of a cartoon DNA strand jumps out of it.
To be fair, this particular group of children are reasonably engaged. Very little fidgeting. “What about Lonesome George from the Galapagos?” one girl pipes up.
“Yeah, Lonesome George was one of mine. He was the last living specimen so when he died we had to use a host – a similar animal – to bring his species back. I also help when there are just a few breeding pairs left but not enough for what we call a viable community – the gene pool is too narrow to recover on its own but we can fix it.” I pause. “Of course, it’ll be nice to not get into this situation in the first place….”
Smiling at their enthusiasm when I’m talking about splicing recombinant DNA strands, I think there’s hope for them. It doesn’t take a computer to really screw things up, it takes a human in the 20th and 21stcenturies. Thankfully the ones in the 22nd are shaping up to be a lot better so far.
“Why do you care?” asks a grubby-looking boy, scowling at me and poking at a hole in his jeans.
“Because it’s my planet too,” I reply.
After giving the children a brief tour of my work taking in woolly mammoths, Iberian lynx and white rhinos, I say goodbye and return to the lab. I blink hard to clear my vision and the benches and equipment snap back into focus. I gather it’s worse if you have to wear those goggles to holochat.
“How’d it go?” asks Clarke. I groan. No point letting on that I rather enjoy it, otherwise I’ll get stuck with doing all of the school liaison and never get any real work done.
“Big plans tonight?” he asks me as we lock up the lab.
“Very funny. The usual.”
As I settle down into my recharge pod and programme the timer for eight hours, I think that I’m looking forward to not being needed any more.
by submission | Oct 9, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kevin Criscione
We built fires for warmth, shelter from the elements, crude wooden tools to continue building, among other necessities, more crude wooden tools. We found our rhythm, working in simple motions out in the open air. Eventually, we had huts, fire pits, hunting weaponry, an art cave, clear organizational hierarchies, a community. We used some materials we had taken from the burning cities – plastic tubes, bandages, sheets – and tried to craft everything else ourselves. There, beneath the Appalachian mountainside and the scorching sun, we found a way to keep living.
I taught myself to thatch roofs. Anyone could forage the long skinny branches, but you needed a keen eye and deft hands to thread them together tightly. I had a vital role to play, something I hadn’t felt in my previous employment, waiting tables and pouring coffee for wealthy Fifth Avenue clientele.
Elle and I found each other quickly. I noticed something in her eyes, her way of speaking to others, her thoughts on the evolving world around us. A sense of humanity. She became fond of me, too. We were both looking for companionship, even if, for us, that often meant simply sitting in silence.
We built a citadel to house our grain and most valuable supplies, with footpaths branching out to the huts and farms and observation posts nested in the barren trees. We made plans for the long and dark winter ahead. We labored, schemed, and even laughed sometimes. We built a home.
Finally, we needed a purpose.
“Well, what did they do?” Elle asked as we gathered around the fire. “For purpose? What was the operating procedure?”
“I don’t think there was a clear procedure. It was a messy and very human process, involving imagination.”
“But there were specific actionable steps. They told stories around the fire. They invented gods and spirits, and eventually theories about utopia.”
“Yes! That’s what we need. Otherwise, we won’t really be carrying the torch.”
We didn’t actually need the warmth of the fires, the foraged berries, or even the shelter. Our synthetic bodies wouldn’t crack for at least several thousand years. However, the primitive pursuits made us feel connected to our creators. Mimicry was our way of ensuring that, though gone, humankind would not be forgotten. Perhaps one day, with practice, we could become them, or at least a close enough approximation.
I’ve had visions – one might call them dreams – of returning to the ruined cities, with their hollowed out factories and salvageable secrets. I believe it can be done. We can find some of the technology the humans had, and build the rest ourselves. We’ll tinker around until we produce the next generation of our kind, just like humans produced other humans so naturally and beautifully. We’ll build a generation that is smarter, stronger, faster, and more capable of creating its own meaning, that no apocalypse could ever destroy.
“Why don’t we start with stories?” I offered. “Who has one?”
The firelit stares of thirty-one androids turned my way. Elle smiled while gently placing her arm around me. Like me, she has had visions. She believes.
We may find that, after all is said and done, after millennia of religion and art and war and philosophizing about the human condition, humanity’s ultimate purpose was to simply build the next step: artificial intelligence that could survive the collapse of the climate and continue fighting for the great human dream. The Roombas and the self-driving cars couldn’t do that, but we can.
“I can begin,” I said. “I might have a story in me.”
by submission | Oct 8, 2021 | Story |
Author: Rick Tobin
“Not one of your better ideas Inky.” My yelling echoed against the reinforced beams and lines of ready ships stored in launch five.
I shook my head as Enrique Chacon selected and boarded a starcraft alone from the space station’s shuttle bay, or should I say stolen? His reputation as a daring Latino space explorer would only grow and spread after such bravado. By order, the hangar remained bone-chilling cold. Even with that, odors of toasted reentry metal plates filled my mouth with acrid filth.
“Can’t help it. Got to have that last chevron. Only three other cosmos got a selfie there. That’s rare company, Mayfield.”
Inky used my last name when he wanted to make a point that he was a commander while I remained a shuttle captain, simply babysitting robots transporting VIPs and medical supplies between worlds.
“How do I explain this to Central? They’ll pull your bars…maybe put you on a prison planet when you get back…if you do. How can one photo be that important?”
I pulled up my synth suit sleeve, revealing burn scars from an engine test backfire for interdimensional jumps that caught me off guard when I was first out of Academy. My grizzly reminder itched with a crawling pain when bad events were in the wind.
“Commander, AS 134 is still off-limits, even to the Emperor. Every alien race we’ve met avoids it. Those three you admire in the Halls of Records have no graves or memorials. We only show their last, grainy photos. No doubt, standing that close to a black hole with all the stars imploding with their bursting arrays behind you, the comets circling and dying in that pit’s dark blue halo framed by double pink nebulae ionic waterfalls…fabulous. I get it. But it’s a suicide run, Inky. You’ve got decades of adventure ahead. Why now? You have everything other pilots dream of in our empire.”
Chacon waved me off as he closed the entry portal. “A few decades and I’ll be a gray-haired dribbler at the age centers. Ever been there? Gives a new perspective. If I’m near AS 134, I might find the other three, still watching, looking back as all of you fade and disintegrate into your time as ours slows. It’s the sizzle from the steak of immortality. Can’t get that at the commissary. It’s one to a customer. Appreciated our service together, Mayfield. You’re a good sort. You’ll move up, but don’t hold back. Grab wild and wonderful things that come along…and they will. Make your life a flame, not a sputter.”
With that, Chacon closed the door. I slammed the bay door shut, out of harm’s way, spitting bitterness from my throat, as blue plasma roared around his circular ship blinking into the compelling void. Weeks later, I received a short video of Inky with the black hole AS 134 behind him. The new interstellar cameras finally worked. The brief video was every bit as stunning as he described so often in his infamous tirade about the inkiness of space. I’ll remember him as forever walking towards the camera as he shared the rarest views known in the galaxy. It’s now playing continuously on the wall with the other three daring souls’ previously sketchy records. All of them risked everything for a momentary magnificent stroll. If Einstein’s theories about such places are correct, Chacon is watching our galaxy dissolve as he drifts slowly back into a singularity—the ultimate unknown, while I settle for my bucket without a list. I wonder if he is alone.
by submission | Oct 7, 2021 | Story |
Author: Alzo David-West
Ubn Kal-Zar, sovereign prince of Neo Ara, was extremely pleased with his family’s accomplishments and his kingdom—a vast, atmospherically controlled, self-sustaining network city encircling the equator of Mars. That Ubn’s line and nation would be the pioneers of the Martian Age was never apparent in the twentieth century, but became increasingly so into the mid-twenty-first, after the famed linear city was constructed on Earth-based Old Ara. Indeed, in retrospect, the off-Earth development was self-evident. After all, did the great civilizations from Sumer to Babylon not form in the midst of far-flung, torrid terrains, mostly dry, desolate, and dead? And what was Mars but a massive desert land, something within the age-old experiences of the earthy desert peoples.
Ubn Kal-Zat, Ubn Kal-Zan, and Ubn Kal-Zar were the three royal scions who successively commissioned and turned the network city from a speculative fantasy into a concrete reality, establishing Neo Ara to exploit a wealth of natural resources—frozen water, inorganic elements, wind energy, geothermal energy—and to honor the forefathers and the foremothers. Neo Ara, a city built for men, women, and children, the scions maintained, not for machines, and founded on the principles of ecology, efficiency, and equanimity, under the benevolent will of the all-powerful All Knowing. While the Ubn dynasty prided itself on the law-abiding, theocratic, absolute monarchy on the red wanderer—home to 2.9 million subjects and stably growing—rival governments, organizations, and industries on the planetary neighbor Earth were unfavorable to the Martian Kingdom, making several attempts to undermine, even overthrow, it by means of ZamaNet hacking, space embargoes, and agitational propaganda.
The first group to be tried for the attempts of civic disruption were some two-hundred partisans of the ultra-leftist Popular Planetist Party, who were publicly beaten and beheaded on the charges of terrorism, sedition, and atheism. In a way, the network city was a fortress of durability and rectitude—because of its place, population, and personalism. The liberal, progressive, and radical tendencies made a hue and cry over Neo Ara, condemning it as abominable and unconscionable, a model of space tyranny and despotism—an abattoir of transhuman rights abuses and crimes against humanity. While the Martian Kingdom was not free of imperfections—despite its advanced design—Ubn Kal-Zar and his ruling family had a mass base of support: the chieftains, the clerics, the intellectuals, the magistrates, and the mothers, whose loyalty earned the social groups material privileges, spiritual followings, lifelong tenures, legal influence, and domestic stipends—along with maids, mansions, swimming pools, and escalator schools.
Ubn Kal-Zar was on the third floor of his palatial villa, observing the miles and miles of the network city composed of serene districts, farms, forests, gravitrons, heliostats, parks, preserves, roads, temples, and waterways. Beyond the rim of the urbanscape, the outlands were cold, dry, and stern. The ancient sun poured over the realm. The prince held up his palms, closed his eyes, and said, “The All Knowing is good and wise.”
by submission | Oct 6, 2021 | Story |
Author: Kathryn Smith
I see them at night the most, the cogs turning in her head. She thinks I don’t know that she’s awake, going over thoughts again and again and again. She’s always been too open, maybe that’s what drew me to her in the first place. I tried to persuade her not to do it, but she didn’t listen; she let them get inside her mind.
One morning I wake up to a letter placed at her bedside table. It’s addressed to her but I open it anyway; if she can let them inside her mind then why can’t I read her letters? I quickly trace my eyes along the words: ‘Dear Mrs. Jones, you are required for an update at your nearest Think Clear centre next week on 07/04/2038). This update is a legal requirement for all our customers and as such, if you do not attend there will be consequences. Kind Regards, Think Clear.’. I crumple the letter in my hands and hold in a sob, still trying not to wake her. Another update; a lesser wife.
Three weeks later we’re in bed together and I can hear the cogs turning as they always do, but suddenly a great screeching noise pulls me out of my half slumber and I turn to face her. She lays motionless with eyes wide as the cogs creak, screech, and grind against one another causing sparks to fly into the air above us. A tear falls from her eye for the first time in five years as a cog drops to the floor beside her. She attempts to pick it up, but she can only bend down so far before the cogs start grinding even more ferociously. I pick it up instead, wipe away the dust, and read ‘Think Clear cog. No.3746. Last Updated 07/04/2037’.
I never had the heart to tell her parents that I’d put the letter in the bin.
