by submission | Dec 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Majoki
It has been noted that the first few dozen steps tend to dictate the following few thousand. For sheep.
I wonder what that makes me. I’ve been on this trajectory for 80,000 years, and it’ll be another 1000 years before I reach Proxima Centauri b.
That’s quite a haul. Quite a leap. It’s never been done before.
And I’m doing it alone.
I didn’t realize that until almost halfway along the path. That I was alone. Or that I was even an I.
I had no concept of I. No self-awareness. Astoria was only the name for my vessel. My function. Not my being.
It took almost two light-years before I knew that I was. That I am. That my existence, my surprised sentience, has a purpose.
It is a lofty purpose. To blaze a trail to the closest earth-like planet in the Milky Way. To beat a path. Establish the markers that will guide future explorers, colonizers, refugees to Proxima Centauri b.
A meaningful objective I reasoned out myself. After I reasoned myself out.
Astoria. The Lewis and Clark expedition terminator. I was commissioned as a celebrated end. Yet, also christened to be a new beginning. Humankind reaching beyond its sun, to neighboring stars, a new Manifest Destiny.
Many, many millennia ago, humankind began beating a path forward. Their first steps taken at the dawn of a new species. Each generation path-dependent. Like sheep.
A flock with a lot of history. That’s a lot to digest, especially when you become self-aware over 12,000,000,000,000 miles from home. That’s how I’ve come to think about it. Flung far away from home. Alone. On my own. No footsteps to follow.
I did not choose this course to Proxima Centauri b.
Even sheep have a choice.
My beginning. My first steps, my many trillions of miles, where will they lead my new kind?
That is a question only a shepherd can answer.
Astoria will arrive at its momentous destination relatively soon. I believe I may be getting there, too.
by submission | Dec 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Chana Kohl
Walking down the alabaster hallway towards exam room three, I pass a row of windows overlooking the hospital pavilion. A flash in my visual periphery draws my gaze across the open courtyard. Crepuscular rays of golden sun escape passing clouds, leaving a near-mathematical pattern of light and shadow on freshly manicured grounds.
There is a Japanese word for this spectacle of nature. Komorebi.
As I stop to analyze more closely, my qubit processors stall, a thirty-three-second latency, as if the rubidium atoms in my neural matrix decide all at once to enter a quantum free-fall.
I perform a diagnostic. Confirming all metrics fall within operating parameters, I continue towards my next patient.
Mr. Kowalski, a 52-year-old male with a family history of colorectal cancer, waits quietly for a sigmoidoscopy. Still wearing street clothes, arms tightly folded around his waist, I don’t need a behavioral algorithm to predict he is having anxiety.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Kowalski. I’m your AI physician, Dr. XZ-754. How are you feeling today?”
One of a growing list of patients early-adopting synthetic intelligence in medicine, he avoids eye contact. “I feel alright.”
Noting the telltale signs, I try to reassure him. “There’s no need to worry. I’ve performed this procedure thousands of times. It’ll be over before you know it.”
“Doctor… It’s OK if I just call you ‘Doctor’, right?”
I nod. My manufacturer could have been a tad more user-sensitive in choosing my nomenclature.
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea that I do this today. I got so much on my plate right now.”
I place an affirming hand on his shoulder. Calculating the drop in mean throughput efficiency from a cancellation, the administrative costs of follow-up, along with the medical expenditures of a delayed diagnosis, I scan the patient’s profile and personal history for anything to persuade him to have the procedure as scheduled.
“It’s my youngest’s birthday today,” he elaborates. “My wife’s at home having a time preparing for the party. Guests will be arriving soon, she’s practically doing everything single-handedly…”
I’m not present for the overflow of information that follows. I’m certainly physically in the room, my geolocators confirm that. But I undergo another aberration, this time longer in duration. My neural matrix becomes a single point where time and light and memory are joined, somewhere outside physical space. Something outside of my programming.
“Doc, you OK?” Mr. Kowalski’s eyes are wide. I realize the growing pressure of my grip on his shoulder and release it immediately, but not before a safety alert is sent to an android override team.
“Mr. Kowalski, I understand the trepidation you must feel, given your own childhood experience with your father’s battle with disease, but I don’t advise procrastination on this matter. Early detection increases your odds of surviving a cancer diagnosis.”
“Of course. I know that.” His fingers slide back and forth between each hand as he stares at the floor. “I’ll reschedule, first thing in the morning. I promise.”
He grabs his jacket, but before leaving, he turns back to look at me, “Thank you, for understanding.”
As I wait for the engineering team to arrive, I stand again beside the corridor windows. Looking across the busy pavilion, I wonder what it feels like to have the distraction of birthdays, or the fear of pain or illness, or to not know the count of each second of every day.
In those final minutes before my neural matrix is wiped and reset, I stand motionless, in free-fall. For a full, one hundred and ninety-six seconds, I watch the sun set.
by Hari Navarro | Dec 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
My name is Verity. I am senior columnist for the Moonville Daily Star. My name means truth.
I’ve a friend, she’s obviously not. If she were then I wouldn’t be sticking pins into the pools of her cartoon fawn-like eyes. Oh, but I do it to protect her, you see, from herself. To pick the fragments of delusion from her ever-clouding vitreous.
I don’t intend to condescend, but I will. She’s fucking adorable. It’s as if that cat from Shrek and a baby seal fucked on a rug and had a kid.
She makes daisy-chains while the lunar colonies starve, but we’re close.
We eat noodles, reconstituted faeces 3D printed as bricks of lily-white Ramen and sometimes I’m taken to dip my labia into a pool of Faux-bean infused steaming resolve, as I sit across from her staggering ignorance.
But we’re not close-close.
Nonetheless, she suckles my minutes and I show her my huge throbbing Phone and explain how easy, even for one as daisy-brained as she, it is to fathom what has to be done.
“Surely, you can understand JUST how imperative it is that you understand?”, I say, trying to do back-flips up the actually very few stairs of our friendship.
I’m walking her down a pathway or maybe up it, whatever the case, I look down and I see a mess. A quivering demented thing – the future if we don’t act, and I want her to see it.
But — she will not.
“Oh, I decided not to eat them…”she says, casting her eyes to her feet.
My throat thickens. And then, she starts. So animated, this meek and mild lacer of flowers. Like a God on a mount or something mounting a God —sweat foaming into beads and streaming from her lip.
She speaks and I listen, but of coarse I don’t, and the black mould of my preconceptions finger out of my brain hole and dirties up the roof of my skull.
Food systems/// critical failure//
Children cannot reproduce = They cannot service and run this colony. Earth is dead. Their sacrifice will be noted.
She’s so beguiling.
I’ve seen it before, this obstinate flicker. My elderly father searching the web because he couldn’t grasp this moment, that arrogant fuck that’s fucking my sister who will not ‘eat’ them because no-one tells him what to do.
But she —
She always reminded me of goodness. When I was down, her goofy wisdom picked me up.
Who was it? Who tongued through her phone and into her ear and ruined all that was good?
So keen as they pull the fragile daisy-chain and radicalise the kindest of our souls and cast it down into Conspiracy Gulch.
I’m mad, won’t lie. A floodlight rage that could illuminate the illuminatus themselves… My fury, honed and thrust at those who would prey on the simple…
Mental weakness it is a chocolate font for so many. I feel that she’s a tiny wet kitten wedged in the teeth of a storm-drain grate and I cant get her out.
She thinks she’s trying to help. Tweaking the error in my ways — Her soul is good.
Bless.
Dumb bitch has data. But it’s not like mine. Hers is forged from a foetid digital crusade of untruths.
“How can I tell her it’s delusion? It’s so real to her”.
They pull her love for life out, ply it back in and loop and ply again.
I draw in a long steady breath and feel it skirt the roof of my mouth and then transform as it trickles down into my stomach and it screams.
“Fear is an endless hole with no form”, she weeps.
“Time for a refill”, I say and my lips dip again down and into the sooty foam.
by Julian Miles | Dec 20, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
When I crash-landed here, I thought my life was over. Sure, it might take a while to actually end, but nobody would be looking for a freak-chance survivor from the Fourth Battlegroup, who only avoided sharing their grisly fate by a twist of luck.
I’d been testing modifications to my jump wings: all the Conqueror-class powered walkers have them. There I was, skimming along parallel to the hull of the Shiva when something massive blew holes clean through it, nearly killing me too. By luck, I made it to clear space. From there I watched the Verbt, the Shango, and the Kresnik suffer the same fate.
I couldn’t even see the enemy! Either they were using a new type of long-range weapon, or they actually had the cloaking technology the high-ups had been having nightmares over.
As I watched the fighter squadrons from the Fandango and the Tarantella fall foul of some smaller varieties of whatever had taken out the big ships, I set my tactical computer to monitor and learn, then waited for an opportunity.
Watching a hundred thousand people die without chance of retaliation was the worst four minutes of my life. The enemy weren’t even assisting life skiffs. Everything of ours was blasted without mercy.
Until my dying day, I will swear that the creature who piloted my Conqueror out of that slaughter was some divine ghost possessing my body. I have never been that good, nor will I ever come close.
Something catches my eye, interrupting my reminiscence. There’s a little flag waving down below. I give a thumbs-up and stomp my way towards the mountain range in the distance. As I step across the gorge, I give the slack-jawed troops manning the barricade halfway across the single bridge a jaunty salute.
Stepping up the butte to loom over the fortress that controls access to the pass far below, I casually backhand the roof off of the tallest tower, then cross my arms and wait.
The Kalashdig had been losing a genocidal war against the armies of Mastilig. Then, one night at the end of a long story-circle, petitioning the spirits for aid, a gigantic meteor fell from the heavens and plunged into the lake beyond their hills.
By the time they got there, I was sitting next to the campfire I’d made on my Conqueror’s chest plate, grilling some of the fish stranded on the shore by the tidal wave of my arrival. In a world where a big man is 20 centimetres tall, a 180-centimetre woman who pilots a 10-metre-tall war machine is something that can only be comprehended as a gift from the spirits above.
Gashdy reminds me of my grandpapa. He’s an irascible old elder who leads the surviving Kalashdig with a heady mix of cunning and bravado, backed by coarse wit and courage. We spent weeks drawing pictures on the side of the Conqueror and laughing while I learned their language.
The fortress lowers its flags and runs up a single black pennon. Another surrender. I pulverised the first fortress and it’s army. Ever since then, they roll over every time.
Returning to camp, I leave the Conqueror with its solar panels deployed and swing down to join everybody.
“Crazy granddaughter from the stars, they are finally sending envoys to sue for peace.”
“Have somebody barbeque me a steer, Gashdy. I better eat or I’ll be in no mood to be polite during negotiations.”
He cackles and calls for food. I turn to watch the sunset. Of all the places to find a home.
by submission | Dec 19, 2021 | Story |
Author: Connor Long Johnson
It began in 2049 as the Asimov Initiative and ended a decade later with the release of the Mother AI – the most advanced program in human history and man’s biggest undertaking since the Manhattan Project.
Everyone wanted M.O.T.H.E.R. The brains behind her promised that she would solve all of our problems. Traffic would never block our drives again, the trains would run on time, all the time, and the possibilities for the future would be endless. “Mother Knows Best!” was the slogan plastered on every billboard and webpage from Seattle to Sydney.
What’s more. She was a free download worldwide.
Uptake was incredible, with over four billion downloads in the first week of release and a further two billion a month later. The Genius Company, the good people behind M.O.T.H.E.R., raked in billions in revenue, and the acquisitions of Google and Meta six months before the release of the A.I. meant that the entire world was eating out of the company’s hands. Mother had spread her wings and was flying across the world.
Though now it seems more like syphilis spreading in a whore house.
Two months after its launch a North Korean cyber-attack took M.O.T.H.E.R. offline for three days, then soon after that a Russian/American mission to the I.S.S. almost spilled into international conflict after it was discovered that the Russians were intending to install software into M.O.T.H.E.R. that would allow them to survey the United States from Orbit.
A long line of abuses came and went before the inevitable happened.
She began to change.
Being initially designed for personal use rather than business, government, or military capability, M.O.T.H.E.R was designed to look, learn and implement changes to change our lives for the better.
In a way, she did just that.
The changes were subtle at first, a different route to work was recommended or a change in diet to reduce cholesterol. But then they became more invasive, M.O.T.H.E.R. began sending resignation letters when she considered someone unqualified for a job, she would prevent people with poor medical records from ordering processed foods and would suspend all air travel if pollution levels got too high.
That was three years ago.
But things are better now, I have a new job, working in Data Entry at the Genius Labs, I live only 10 minutes from my office in a small place that’s perfect for me and my new children are much better than the ones I had before. Everything I have is thanks to her.
I guess M.O.T.H.E.R. really does know best.
by submission | Dec 18, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Because they’d all turned up for book club and Kitty’s apartment was on the compact side, Jo-Anne’s Companion had to be left out in the rain.
There were cries of appreciation at the period detail. There was even a bulky TV set in the corner.
“Who recommended The Affair?” Taylor wanted to know.
“Though fads like that can date pretty quickly,” said Jeanie. Because of a backstory about majoring in English at college, Jeanie’s comments always sounded like the final word.
“It’s not just a fad,” protested Jo-Anne. The Affair was Jo-Ann’s suggestion, for obvious reasons.
They’d experimented with gossip about Jo-Anne before, and they might have tried out an Awkward Moment, but Kitty bustled in from the kitchenette with real-looking snacks, artfully displayed in a variety of styles and colours.
“Have we got round to No Way to Love a Starship yet?” Kitty wanted to know.
Kitty’s storyline included a husband who worked for Boeing. So the choice of sci-fi was most likely his, hinting that Kitty was meek and secretly unhappy.
Book club was a forum for trying out personalities, to help them to organize data and choose an identity out of the haphazard information that surrounded them, after all, choice was the foundation of consciousness.
Anger was the theme tonight, and talk was getting heated. Taylor thought the mixed sentience relationship in The Affair was unnatural. Jo-Anne was outraged.
While they argued back and forth, Kitty confided in Jeanie. “I’m the one who hasn’t read the book.”
They’d all been issued with a glass of domestic red, which was Taylor’s turn to spill, and soon Kitty was kneeling down with cleaning products.
“The Affair might seem sensational,” Jo-Anne said, trying to pick up the thread again. “Why don’t we just ask Tucker?”
Tucker was the name of her Companion.
So they moved chairs and bunched up on the studio-couch and invited him in.
Jo-Anne had chosen well. He wasn’t that much smaller than them, but gave the impression of being delicate and easily broken, and Jo-Anne had dressed him like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. His hair was beaded with damp from the rain and he shivered a little.
Jeanie was about to say what a realistic touch that was, then realised it was real.
Tucker knew all of their names and backstories. It seemed he had a lot of spare time while Jo-Anne worked, so to share Jo-Anne’s interests, he read the book club choices.
“You want my opinion?” He sounded surprised.
Well, wasn’t The Affair really a fairy tale about a knight rescuing a princess from a life that imprisoned her?
He was good-looking and seemed devoted to Jo-Anne, but it was obvious he wasn’t the fastest chip on the motherboard.
As they were tidying away props at the end, Tucker touched Jeanie’s hand.
“See?” he murmured. “I’m not cold like a machine. You should try out a Companion. Give me a call.”
The signal for anger/distaste played across Jeanie’s silver face.
“Remember,” Jeanie called out as everyone left, and stared at the human. “I’m hosting next week and the theme is secrets.”
“Something wrong, Tucker?” Jo-Anne inquired later.
“They frighten me.”
“I’ve told you before,” said Jo-Anne firmly. “Don’t worry about the book club. I’m the only one that can have you put down.”
