by submission | Feb 25, 2021 | Story |
Author: Ross Clare
“What exactly have you been doing all this time?” the alien demanded.
The scientists of the Legacy Project stood in a loose group before it, shuffling awkwardly from one foot to another. Many were desperately attempting to avoid eye contact by absolutely any means necessary.
One scientist attempted a response.
“Um—”
“Mnh!” The sharp interjection from the alien was intended merely to instate silence. It was accompanied by a very stern look, raised eyebrows, and a single raised index finger.
The finger was eventually lowered, and the alien took a deep breath as if about to deliver a lecture on responsibility to a roomful of adolescents.
“When we came here,” it said, “those many, many years ago, we left specific instructions on what your kind were supposed to do. And, how to do it: how to move forward, how to achieve space travel, unity, technological sophistication… and perhaps most importantly, how NOT to live.” This last point was enforced by a withering look in the direction of no scientist in particular.
“Your ancestors, however many times over, were to pass our guidance down through the ages. Did they forget? Is that what’s happened?”
It looked around, finding no-one. For none dared confirm that their ancestors had not, in fact, forgotten at all.
“Why isn’t your region of space filled with intrepid cosmonauts? Where is your quantum technology? Optronics?”
A pause.
“Have you seen what they’re doing in Andromeda? Do you know what they’ve accomplished over there?” As if to say: ‘why can’t you be more like Andromeda?’.
It continued. “You do realise, don’t you, that we left an entire cache of fresh water beneath the surface of your Moon? What do you suppose that was for?”
It didn’t wait for an answer.
“It was a waystation, of sorts. A kind of service stop on the way to greater things. Now,” and it said this word with serious energy, “I find you’ve been there… once? In all this time?”
Even as it paused for a little longer than before, the scientists were far too busy attending to matters around them that were, suddenly, of the utmost importance: using their fingernails to chip away at painted walls, scratching a sudden itch on their shoulder, reassessing the pattern of the ceiling tiles.
“We stopped by Mars on the way here, you know,” it informed them with a cutting scorn entirely unbefitting the comment it was underpinning it. “All of the planets in the system, in fact. You see, we’d left materials, resources, supplies on every single one. Every one! And it turns out the food we implanted under the Martian dust is now… dust! Been there so long, it’s a desiccated bed of microscopic fossils. Useless it is, now. A waste.”
It wasn’t done. “My my, we surmised, something terrible must have happened on Earth this past millennium. Yes! Yes, it had. You!” It raised its arms up in half-mocking exasperation. “You happened.”
It stopped here momentarily, to let disgrace sink right in, before going on.
“We find that your world is on fire. Literally, in some instances. Everyone hates each other. Then, when they find other people to hate, they form loose groups of like-minded folks and hate collectively. Lies are the new truth, facts are now fiction, and science, oh!” No, not science! “Nobody trusts science anymore. Nobody trusts you,” again, an almighty emphasis on this last word for maximum efficiency of shame-allocation, “though now I’m starting to understand why. You’re not going out there into the great unknown – you haven’t even got to grips with things on the ground!”
That one brave scientist, once chief of the Legacy Project and now a mere mumbling man-child, ventured another response.
“We–”
Oh, but it was willing to hear them out now. You’d better have something good, chief.
“Go on! Enlighten us, please… No? I ask again, then. What have you been doing all this time? What, from our set of very specific and generously provided aims, have you achieved?”
The chief thought for a moment.
“I’m waiting.”
“We—” he began. And then: “… We’re sorry.”
The alien took this in. With hands now placed on hips, it began nodding, though it kept its eyes looking regretfully toward the floor.
“Yes. Yes, I understand. You’re sorry.”
Then it turned its face to theirs once more.
“And so am I.”
It feigned sympathy – or was it sincere?
“You see… I’m not angry. No, not angry.”
The scientists awaited the death-knell they all knew approached.
“I’m just disappointed.”
by submission | Feb 24, 2021 | Story |
Author: Philip Carrigan
Jordan didn’t leave a note before he jumped off that bridge. All he left was a brief voicemail: “It was just a fantasy, man, I didn’t want to hurt anybody. Turn Jonni on, you’ll see why I couldn’t stay. Just… just don’t tell my ma about her.” Jordan’s tone was soft, shaken, and he stuttered through the message. I could hear the shame in his voice.
Jordan was ahead of the curve when it came to AI, even more so than the college brats that actually studied in our classes. The girls he repurposed were trash when I found them, but by the time he finished working on them, they were like new. Hair brushed straight, their kittens scrubbed with disinfectant, and their pasts wiped clean from internal hard-drives. They were supposed to be sex-dolls—nothing more. Programmed to act like they wanted to be screwed, so there wasn’t usually too much work involved for Jordan. Lots of wealthy boys in college buy artificial sweethearts to keep them company, but they tend to lose interest when a new, virgin model comes out. At least they stopped knocking-up their house-maids.
They say AI is still in its genesis, but I don’t know a thing about the technical differences between models. They’re just Jennifers and Cassidys to me. Still, we made decent bread refurbishing and selling them for a quarter the price they were initially bought for, and that was enough for us.
Then I found a Plain Jane. Her eyes were brown and no larger than any real girl’s eyes. Her nose was actually a little big: not the usual, nearly nonexistent kind I was used to seeing in these Monicas. I had pulled her out of the trash by her tangle of raven-black hair and almost didn’t bother bringing her over to Jordan’s place, but I hadn’t scored anything better so I figured I may as well try.
Jordan was obsessed with her from the start. He snatched her from me and slammed the door shut. That pissed me off, so I took a week to cool down before heading back. When I got there, Jordan didn’t want to let me in, but I’m bigger than he was so I insisted. His apartment was a mess as usual: clothes strewn about and boxes of old food stacked on the counter. The only clean area was his computer desk where the Charlotte sat in his chair, naked and propped up in an almost natural position.
“I call her Jonni,” Jordan sputtered. “She reminded me of a girl I used to like in high school, who I’d used to think about doing stuff with. You get it, man? Let me keep this one, and I’ll give you the full cut on the next doll.”
Fine. A full cut was cool with me. I left without saying anything else, and I didn’t hear from Jordan for three weeks… until that voicemail hit my phone. I went and checked on Jonni, who took her sweet time booting up. So there I stood in Jordan’s apartment, amid all the abandoned clothes and trash, waiting for this robot to turn on. When her AI faculties finally loaded up, she started screaming for Jordan to stop doing whatever he’d last been doing to her. God, I still haven’t told my girlfriend about this part.
I don’t know what Jordan had gotten into, or how he hacked her that way, but I’ll never forget the way she begged and begged for him to leave her alone. These girls weren’t supposed to sound so convincing.
by submission | Feb 23, 2021 | Story |
Author: Tina Ruiz
“Sometimes I want to die,” she said. “Your soul is tired,” he replied. Oh, how right he was. Her soul was tired. She had spent her life fighting to be normal in a world that wasn’t. She struggled to fit in with people who refused to understand her and covered up the damage done to her body and her spirit by those who only wanted to control her. She was tired of fighting; she was tired of being strong.
She was an enigma, both not enough and too much at the same time. She could never live up to anyone’s expectations. They endlessly told her she was lacking. She wasn’t smart enough, yet, she thought she was more intelligent than everyone else. She wasn’t pretty enough; in fact, she was disgusting; nevertheless, she was a tease. He didn’t help her with the house because she didn’t remind him, but if she did, she was nagging. She could never do anything right in their eyes. She was tired of fighting to be seen for herself rather than how they were determined to perceive her.
She wanted to find a meadow with lush spring grass and an explosion of vibrant wildflowers. There, she would lie on the thick, green carpet, gaze into the blue sky, and watch the billowing clouds drift by. She’d close her eyes and listen to the bees buzzing from flower to flower. Birds would be singing in the trees above her. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves in the trees above.
She thought of the world she lived in, full of hate and greed. Men killed children in schools and those who were different. Corporations and governments raped the land for money, knowing yet not caring about the damage they caused to the environment and future generations—pharmaceutical companies allowed people to die for profit. And men bellowed that they would kill everyone different, those whose only desire was to save the world and the souls that inhabit it.
She wanted a world to exist in which people meant what they said, not one where promises whispered without the intention of being kept. A world where deception and manipulation weren’t considered normal. She wanted to exist where love ruled rather than hate, and people didn’t destroy each other for personal gain.
Her life was a string of broken dreams, broken promises, and heartache. Each time she thought she was within reach of her dreams, they shattered like crystal thrown against a wall. The shards of glass left behind forever embedded in her body, in her soul. She could feel their sharp edges digging in, shredding, drawing blood each time she tried to reach for happiness. They wanted to keep her down, to prevent her from trying, to let her know she wasn’t deserving. She was not enough, and yet, she was too much.
She opened her eyes and looked once more at the puffy clouds floating by. She heard the bees buzzing, the birds singing, wind chimes melodious tinkling. Her soul was tired, and she didn’t want to fight anymore. She would just lay in that meadow until the grass grew over her body and flowers dotted her limbs. She would listen to the bees buzz around her, and the birds sing in the breeze. Then, her soul would float to the top of the trees and rustle their leaves. Only then would she finally be free from a world that could never understand her or meet her needs.
by Julian Miles | Feb 22, 2021 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The little AIbot skitters across the floor, legs not quite obeying it’s eager command to leap onto Rhonda and pester her until she gives in and plays with it.
“Slow down, Saffy. You’ll break a leg again.”
“Shan’t.”
The tiny terror skids to a stop against her boot and promptly starts to climb, foreclaws doing the work while the rear legs bob like shiny pendulums with claws on.
“And what, young AIbot, do you think you are?”
“Welociwaptor. Comin’ to ‘ill you.”
Rhonda chuckles.
“Where did you get ‘velociraptor’ from, Saffy?”
“Wilm. Bwoosh lemme see. Juwassic Wuld.”
It scrambles higher, oblivious to the look we exchange before shouting together.
“Bruce!”
We hear the sound of someone falling from a top bunk two rooms down. The swearing continues for a while, then gets louder. Bleary eyes regard us from a face nearly lost in shaggy hair and an even shaggier beard.
“What’s burning?”
Rhonda points to the climber on her sweatshirt.
“Your credentials, again.”
I push a chair towards Bruce.
“You showed it Jurassic World?”
He shrugs.
“She loved Jurassic Park so much, I couldn’t say no.”
Rhonda leans forward, her tone deceptively light.
“Which one?”
“She thought the beginning of The Lost World with the Compys on the beach was really funny, but she loved the velociraptors in JP3.”
I watch as Rhonda turns red. I hear Bruce swallow. Time to head this off before it, who is doing that ‘intense witnessing’ process they do, gets some first-hand examples of emotions we’d rather it didn’t get working examples of.
“I can see that being appropriate. It’s meant to be a co-ordinating influence. Speaking of which, why don’t you go and put it with Pack Zeta for a while?”
It cocks its head towards me, then leaps down and scampers across to Bruce, arms spread like a child running to a beloved uncle. He picks it up with a beaming smile, then exits the room chatting happily with it.
As their cheerful conversation fades, I turn back to catch Rhonda’s look of concern.
“I think he’d make a marvellous handler.”
She smiles.
“Thank you. I thought we were going to have to set up another hunt, because he’s an awful behaviourist.”
“His family ran a pet shop in Scunthorpe. He was a juggler. When things all fell in and the arts got sidelined, he somehow talked his way into a junior opening on the robotics program at Autonomous Warrior IV. Something about animal training at the pet shop and working with some of the early Sony dogbots. Anyway, ten years later, here he is. The sheer brass to do that has got to be worth something.”
“If he can pass it on.”
“He’ll do it by example. You see how it’s keen on him? He should be given a chance to have it as a live-in companion. It’ll teach the packs. Make every pack before Zeta the control, Zeta and up get its influence.”
She looks thoughtful.
“All well and good, but what’s the fallback?”
I steeple my fingers.
“We decommission unit Sapphire-33, nickname ‘Saffy’, and have packs Alpha through Epsilon use Bruce for a hunt. Run it as urban stealth with body retrieval while he’s on leave.”
“That’ll leave a lot of blood to explain.”
“Animal rights stunt will cover it.”
“What if he goes for publicity or aid?”
“The 77th can handle the media, and Security Team 4 already think Bruce is a waste of space.”
“So they would run interference. That covers all bases. I like it. Good plan, Sergeant.”
I snap her a casual salute.
“Thanks, Captain.”
by submission | Feb 21, 2021 | Story |
Author: Yvonne Lang
I have always believed in self-sacrifice for the greater good. I could not comprehend how people knew our way of life was going to be the end of us but still continued. I remember when the last rhino died. People were sad, but they didn’t change. They hoped to use science to bring them back, but weren’t talking about ways to stop further extinctions, only how we may bring back what we killed off. The priorities seemed skewed to me. When the last elephant died it wasn’t even headline news. How could people see such wonders and let them disappear? I vowed to make a difference.
I specialised in engineering and joined the first space mission to find another planet to colonise and perfect a better way of living. Some people had to be willing to make the sacrifice for the greater good. So, I signed up.
It was actually quite enjoyable. Even in a spaceship billions of miles from Earth we cultivated a sense of belonging and were full of optimism. That hope dwindled when the messages from home became more desperate. Fires were breaking out with a greater frequency and ferocity. Water supplies were running low inland and taking over coastal homes. We had to find a solution quick, otherwise there would be nothing to go back to.
Then we found the perfect planet that could take some pressure off Earth, and our experiments started producing results. Now we just had to get back home with the solutions, hoping we weren’t too late. As we got closer, we saw the sun – then realised it was Earth, blazing so brightly. Mankind had literally burned its home.
When we landed years later, the fires had gone, but so had the people. Humans had fought so much over the remaining resources; they had wiped each other out. There were no people anywhere. We searched for weeks. The only people left on Earth were those from the returning mission – forty-eight of us.
“We were too late,” Melala solemnly observed after another fruitless day of looking for survivors.
There was a low murmur of reluctant agreement, our team had found the solution, but too late for mankind. I disagreed though. We had been tasked with saving the Earth – and when we travelled thousands of miles each night in our craft to search for survivors, we saw a place deserted of humans – but teeming with other life. Rivers ran full, clean, and full of fish. I saw waterfalls – they had all dried-up decades before my birth. I got to experience snow – and saw a polar bear mother with her cubs. Mango groves were spreading along coastlines, uprooting old hotel and restaurant relics. Sharks were hunting in bountiful oceans free of fishing gear. Giraffe roamed plains again. Earth was beautiful and was self-healing after a break from us. Yet people were back now. Would we live better? Or would we repeat our mistakes and wipe out more species?
I wrestled with these thoughts late at night. Could we guarantee that we would not destroy it all over again? I finally decided that we could not, there was only one way to make sure Earth survived – people couldn’t. I made it painless, I filled the ship with gas and knocked them all out before setting it alight. I watched the ship burn like we had burned the planet. When I was the only one left, I raised the weapon to my head with no hesitation. I have always been a great believer in self-sacrifice for the greater good.
by submission | Feb 20, 2021 | Story |
Author: Robert Beech
I’d been on the force a couple of weeks when I started doing night patrol. Night patrol is a rite of passage that all the newbies go through. It’s where you get to see what lies beneath the façade and see the city for what it really is. Night is when the parks change, when kids and moms with strollers give way to drug dealers and bad guys with guns, and sometimes something worse. Sometimes we were the something worse.
My supervisor was Sergeant Joe, a tough, black skinned woman with a scar that ran from the corner of her mouth up to her ear. I’d never gotten up the nerve to ask her how she got it. About 2 AM, a call came in about a disturbance in the park and we went over to check it out.
There were no kids playing loud music or smoking joints, no signs of a gang-fight or a fistfight, or anything. A complete non-event.
There was a black sedan pulled over to the curb by the bridge. I walked slowly around it and shone my flashlight in the window. Nobody inside. No signs of drugs in the backseat, no bloody handprints on the car. I thought of jimmying the trunk to see if there was a body inside, but couldn’t think of a good excuse to do it.
I was walking back towards the squad car when I heard a rustling by the path that leads down to the river. I shone my flashlight over to see what was making the noise. Pretty soon a dog walked out of the woods. I started to head back to the squad car and then stopped. I knew that dog. It was one of ours, from the K-9 unit. The only problem was the dog had died a couple of days ago. Then I realized who the person with the dog was. It was the dog’s partner, Bobby. He and his dog had both been killed in a shootout in the park. At least that’s what they told us.
“Hello, Jimmy,” he said, and I saw then that the left side of his face had been eaten away by something.
I didn’t walk back to the squad car, I ran.
“Joe,” I screamed. “Get us out of here. Now.”
“What?”
“It’s Jimmy and his dog,” I shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here, now.”
And then it was too late. Jimmy had caught up to me and was hammering on the window with his fists. The glass shattered, and Jimmy reached in, trying to yank the door open. Finally Joe put the car into motion. Jimmy hung onto the door, forcing his head in through the broken window. Joe began swerving the car, trying to shake Jimmy loose, but he hung on. Finally, she floored it, aiming for one of bridge’s pillars, I think. Whatever she was trying for didn’t work and we plunged off the side of the bridge.
#
They found the car the next morning. I don’t know how they explained the lack of any bodies. Maybe they didn’t explain it. Strange things happen sometimes.
There’s been a real drop in crime over the last year. The drug dealers and bad guys with guns have pretty much disappeared from the park. Of course, so have any law-abiding folks. Word has got around. You don’t go in the park after dark. Not in this neighborhood. We’re still here though, me and Joe and Jimmy and his dog, and all the rest of us. Keeping things safe. We’re the night patrol.
