by submission | Jan 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
The doctors head swirls and vomit pisses from the swelling inside of his head and into the corners his eyes. He blinks and the moistened windows clear and he looks down upon his manacled hands and then along the stretch of table that leads to the dark form that settles at its very end.
“Welcome to the Fairfield Woman’s Correction Facility and Spa… Mr You.”
“How’d I get here?”
“Found. Beaten and just to the left of dead.”
“My briefcase…”
“Black carbon-fibre with blood-red details and a shield emblem featuring a rearing horse?”, the dark form offers as it decides to form into a young woman adorned in a jutt-breasted Nirvana smiley-face T-shirt.
“It’s full of cash money… Maybe I’ll buy you a new shirt?”
“Nothing of that description in the report. Be sure to let you know if it turns up…”
“This is outrageous!”
“Isn’t it just. Cash? It’s now only used to stoke the barbecues on not-Nude Wednesdays. You been… in a cave?”
“Basement”
“The swam ceased three years ago…”
“Large basement. I seek sanctuary. I can more than pay my way. I want in.”
“We’ve very strict criteria for entry. You’re not a DJ are you?… We’ve the summer festivals and nobody to spin the discs.”
“I’m a cardio-thoracic surgeon”
“Oh…”
“Oh?”
“We’ve a doctor… anything else?”
“I have an M.D. from Harvard, I am board certified in cardio-thoracic medicine and trauma surgery, I have been awarded citations from eighteen different medical boards…”
“So, that’s a no to the DJing?”
“I’m… a… specialist.”
“Only REALLY good at one thing then… diversity is key here.”
“I’m a better surgeon than any doctor you could possibly have…”
“Dawn is actually a vet, but she’s pretty damn good on the ol’ hoomans too…”
“Seriously?”
“Basement was a bunker… right?”
“May have been… no use to you now, destroyed it…”
“As you do.”
“Electricity gone. Entrance seal-door stuck in open position…”
“Terrible. So, you killed it?”
“Didn’t want people getting up in my shit.”
“You shared this enormous throbbing bunker with…”
“My wife.”
“And she is…”
“Dead.”
“Kill her?”
“No.”
“Not even a wee bit, when food ran low?”
“Food… would have lasted years had it not been for that damned reactor malfunction.”
“Reactor?”
“Cold fusion… Supposed to last a lifetime…”
“Cold fusion is my favourite fusion. Do you have any… hobbies?”
“Wine.”
“You’re a vintner?”
“No, I collect fine wine. Considered to be amongst the top five private collections in the world.”
“Had? No more?”
“I smashed them all and left it a hole of cinder. What’s mine is mine.”
“So, you killed your wife?”.
“Cancer. Life support systems stopped when the reactor stopped”.
“But, you’re a doctor… oh, that’s right…”
“I am a cardio thoracic surgeon…”
“… a specialist, I forgot. Branch into Oncology maybe…”
“I’m perfect at what I do. I m going to be a part of this little new world of yours… you cannot afford to pass me by.”
“May… may, take a few weeks to process but we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as well would you look at that… Decision already confirmed. Sorry better luck next time”.
“You cant send me back out there… who the fuck are you… some lowlife convict to judge me?”
“You presume to much, doctor… I’m no inmate. I was an outmate just as you. I sat in that very chair. But I didn’t have handcuffs because I’m pretty and not an asshole”.
“What are you?”
“Me… I’m a preschool teacher…. got to know a wee bit about a fucking lot. Backbone of society right here my friend… and when the sun falls be sure to watch for the razor-hook backs of their fingers… that’s what will end you. Next!… please.”
by submission | Jan 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Michael D. Hilborn
Twenty minutes had passed since the cop had taken Donald’s license and registration back to the patrol car, and Donald was feeling famished.
As if he had spoken out loud, Samantha said, “Don’t do anything foolish.”
“But I’m hungry,” said Donald to his wife, “and that guy was being a jerk.” The cop had certainly been out of line, screaming at Donald at the top of his lungs for what amounted to a minor speeding infraction. The cop deserved whatever was coming to him. “Besides, you’re hungry, too. I can tell. Do you really want to continue eating that crap?”
Samantha paused, her plastic spork hovering over the cup of coleslaw and bucket of fried chicken she held in her lap. The corner of her mouth skewed upward.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
Samantha lay the spork down in the cup and stared right at him. He loved her eyes, those beautiful yellow irises, those slits for pupils. Too bad the cop and the rest of mankind couldn’t see her like he did. They didn’t know what they were missing. “I don’t want to have to disappear again, Donald,” she said. “We have a nice home, some nice neighbors, good jobs, a nice life. It would be shame to lose all of that.”
“It’d be easy enough to start over,” he said, noticing in the rear-view window that the cop was returning. “We’ve done it before, and we’re due for a change. You’ve said you always wanted to live upstate. All we need to do is continue heading north.” He pointed at the sign to Saratoga Springs, and he smiled his most convincing smile.
Her inner eyelids clicked together, a signal she was considering what he had said. Then: “No, Donald.”
He sighed. “Suit yourself.”
“Just be polite,” Samantha said, and rolled down the window for the cop to lean in.
The cop, unfortunately, was not polite. Donald tolerated a minute of the yelling and pejoratives before he flicked out his tongue. It snapped across the car’s interior and planted its spiked tip squarely between the officer’s eyes. The venom took hold in an instant: the victim froze in mid-tirade, his expression not even having time to register surprise. Donald’s tongue snapped back between his rows of teeth.
“Dammit, Donald,” his wife muttered. Nevertheless, she dragged the paralyzed officer through the window. “Those patrol cars have cameras, you know. No way we can go back home now.” Anger laced her voice, but Donald noticed she was already prodding the officer’s fleshy neck with the spork.
“Saratoga Springs, here we come.” Donald grinned, put the car in gear, and continued heading north.
by submission | Jan 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Chris Grebe
Armida was no longer thinking completely clearly, of this she was certain.
The Carmine Reaction. That’s what they were going to call it. She was sure of that too, somehow, sure as she was that she hadn’t stopped for a restroom for about two hundred miles, would have to stop soon; sure that she shouldn’t be so sure, because she wasn’t thinking completely clearly.
The Carmine Reaction. She’d left the draft paper in her motel in Navasota. Before she picked up the device.
She couldn’t even afford a Best Western, but soon she would be famous. Her papa would be proud. Would have been. Armida smiled and kept her speed down. Five over. Not attracting any attention—not yet, not anytime before tonight, and no more after.
She didn’t like attention. Hadn’t gotten much at school, nor at the lab when she started. She was never one for Antics as a grown human. She laughed at herself, antics, her father’s word, always made Armida think of something ants would drink. Papa would accuse her of getting up to Antics, swing her in his arms and she would laugh, a little girl with nothing but playtime. More Antics!
No Antics now. The diarrhea stopped earlier in the day, but she knew it would be back, would be worse.
The world has stopped spinning. The highway lights slide past her windshield, the sliver of silky moon above and the world has stopped spinning.
She thought of the radiation from the thing in the way back of her little Subaru, eating her silently and invisibly, a school of carnivorous gamma fish with sharp sharp teeth.
It wasn’t fatal yet but would be soon. No more Antics at all then.
TOYOTA CENTER 2
The sign flashed in her headlights and was gone.
Almost there. Houston had been good for her, for her family. Not as good for the ones kept in the TOYOTA CENTER. Armida was not a patriot. Not an anarchist. Not a socialist. Not a single tweet betrayed her interest in politics because she had none.
She wondered how long to deploy the thing, after she got the cages open. After she set the ones in the cages free.
One more Antics Papa.
The diarrhea was lurking, but it wouldn’t be much longer now. Armida rolled her window down, and let the wind through her hair, until she slowed to take the exit.
by submission | Jan 4, 2022 | Story |
Author: Jeff Hill
Upon waking this morning, I was surprised to feel no different. Angry with the world (and the lack of funds in my bank account), I begrudgingly took my shower and yelled obscenities as my roommate walked past me, laughing at my piss poor mood.
“Didn’t work,” I told him as I walked back into my room.
“Oh, no. That’s horrible, dude,” he said, suddenly wiping the smile off his face.
I got dressed and went out to the kitchen to make a lunch for myself and start cooking breakfast when I realized that he had already done both of those things for me. He sat at the bar and looked up at me, concerned.
“Waste of money. Completely and totally.” I told him.
He thrust his fists onto the table. “I hate them!” he yelled, a little louder than I would have usually expected for this early in the morning.
“I swear,” I start to tell him, “If I could get away with it, I’d march down to that building and burn the place to the ground.”
“Hold on a sec… I’m on it,” he said, jumping up immediately and running past me to the back of the apartment, grabbing his car keys and putting one finger in the air, signaling for me to wait just one minute.
“Weirdo,” I mumbled, starting to feel a sense of justice in the world.
He returned about five minutes later with a giant gas can, empty, and a look of pride on his face.
He turned on the TV.
“Local pharmaceutical company ablaze downtown,” the reporter said. He tossed the empty gas can on the ground.
“Dear God!” I exclaimed. “What is wrong with you! You are insane!”
“Well, yeah. Now I am,” he said, loading his shotgun from behind the kitchen cabinets and aiming directly for me.
His first shot missed, his second grazed my leg and I realized while he reloaded that the pharmacist was right. The scientists weren’t incorrect.
“My powers. They work. I can’t believe this is happening.”
He reloaded and raised the shotgun to my head.
“I believe you.”
by Julian Miles | Jan 3, 2022 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The chaos on the streets is nothing compared to the chaos at headquarters. In the end, I give up and hop from desk to desk, then jump down and barge through the queue into his office.
“You called, Chief?”
Clarence Christie, Chief of the San Francisco Special Operations Bureau, grins at the shouts of outrage at my queue jumping, then gestures for Rales – the gent I pre-empted – to close the door.
“One day you’re going to meet someone you can’t get by.”
“Probably.”
He shakes his head, then scoops a file off his cluttered desk and throws it to me.
“Find this man. You’ll have anything you need to make it happen.”
I open the file. There’s an interview document, some psych evaluation notes, a blurred mugshot, and some CCTV stills of him being carried from a building by four sanatorium orderlies. I check the location and dates. Los Angeles. Four years ago, almost to the day.
“How does this loon link to what just levelled Los Angeles?”
Clarence gestures to the SD card in the plastic bag stapled to the inside of the folder. He pushes his laptop over.
“Slot and play.”
I do so. It’s a short video. The figure is dressed in a ragged T-shirt and chinos. Manacled and chained to both chair and table, he glares from the screen. I can almost feel his rage as he starts to speak.
“One more time for the hard of believing: I come from a time 176 years ahead of this today. We’re told The Singularity has happened for those deserving of it. The EHAI – Enhanced Humans and Artificial Intelligences – created a supposed utopia in which there is nothing for the unmodded to do except work in factories accruing credits towards enhancement. Production lines are human powered because we’re better at maintaining and replacing ourselves than machines.
“Some of us unmodded decided to carve out a future for ourselves: an independent nation where we could live free of implants. At first, EHAI ignored us. Then they laughed. Then they legislated. That’s when the riots occurred. Soon after that, the resistance started. Fortunately, leaders rose to turn UnMod into a cohesive force. We won: got ourselves a decent size island. We’re getting more and more disaffected coming to join us. People are shutting off their enhancements and leaving EHAI.
“The ruling polity decided to stop the UnMod movement. Tracing the bloodlines back, they found a critical point where the ancestors of many key UnMod figures were in geographic proximity. They’re going to send something back to deal with them.”
An indistinct question comes from off-screen. There’s laughter. The soldier looks confused, then angrier.
“Why would they send a cyborg assassin? It’s simpler to send a K-bomb.”
He stares at the screen.
“They’re going to erase Los Angeles sometime in the next five years.”
The video ends. I look at Clarence.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
He shrugs.
“Four years ago, the name he gave was Kevar Jykson. After transfer and evaluation, he did two stints at Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital right here in San Francisco, then some new therapy worked. He was declared sane and released eleven months ago.”
My boss sighs.
“Yes, I think he played along to get released. Question is, why? What did he know that could have prevented the five hundred square miles containing Los Angeles from being vapourised?”
I tuck the file into my jacket, then smile at him.
“More importantly, does Mister Jykson have a Plan B?”
Clarence sighs.
“That’s the essential question. Go find him and ask.”
by submission | Jan 2, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“The old rage in colder ways, for they alone decide how to spend the young.” – Pierce Brown Dark Age
The toy soldier guarded the corner of the commander’s makeshift field desk. The faded tin sentry with chipped red jacket, high peaked cap and bent bayonet stood upon the order.
Especially in the age of cyberwar, such an order was on paper. Hand written. Delivered by flesh and blood. A reminder of what was real and what was to be spilled.
The commander concentrated on the little toy. Its eyes fixed and sure. A plaything of the past, a steadfast harbinger of battles to come. War made fast in the hands of children. It changed little. An order given. Received. A decision needed. A sacrifice demanded.
His tactical screens displayed the grids under current assault. A counterassault had been ordered: a hype and wipe. Jacking systems beyond their breaking points, then a massive takedown of security redundancies and fail-safes.
Homes, hospitals, schools, critical infrastructure and industrial sites would implode, explode. Many would suffer.
Though not the commander. Not his soldiers.
What were soldiers anymore?
In cyberwar there was only the enemy. The other side. Imaginary lines within which the ordinary comforts of modern life—all manner of integrated systems, machinery, devices, appliances, transport—were turned against any and all. Faces pressed into pillows or pushed out windows. Silent and fraught.
That was the commander’s charge: take it down, take them down.
Them.
He imagined them. No different than himself. So much like the teenage daughter he’d lost to them. A casualty of an attack intended to jack fleets of spy-and-die drones. High on a mountain pass in winter, her autonomobile’s systems were collaterally blitzed. Her vehicle accelerated wildly and plunged into a deep ravine. Lost in snow and ice, she froze. He did not know how slowly.
He picked up the toy soldier from his desk, from atop the order. He held it lightly in his bare hand. Felt the chill of metal. A shiver of recognition.
The commander gave his command. There might have been other ways, but he did not know them. There might have been some who did not need to pay, but he did not owe them.
He put the toy soldier back in place. Upon the desk. Atop the order. In the middle of war unlike any other. Still child’s play.
