by submission | Apr 4, 2021 | Story |
Author: D J Lunan
From open-cast cobalt mines to litter-foraging on landfill, BudBot’s rental armada of vaguely-affordable ‘displacement robots’ were sanitising the human labour from the most awful, unsafe, and extreme jobs.
Sitting in her mother’s basement in suburban Madrid, Jaime was persistently angry that her coveted career in ‘poverty alleviation’ hid a sobering reality of stomaching hours of live-streamed dispute resolution with disgruntled and mischievous renters, all scratching a living in the world’s most unforgiving locations.
These robots broke down. A lot. Renters are forced to queue at Budbot’s ill-dispersed booths dotted across the world, and deal with Customer Services representatives like Jaime.
“Next”, she commanded the AI, and was instantly linked to East Nzerekore in the Guinean highlands.
A tall glowering prospector was impatiently pressing his robot’s handprint to the booth’s screen, mimicking the futile fluttered pressing of the elevator call button.
The prospector sighed, leaning on his robot to exaggerate his exhaustion and dissatisfaction.
“This damn ‘bot is not keeping its bloody charge, squire – maybe it is this kak sealant you use – you must swap him out for me – I have kids to feed”.
To Jaime, the prospector was childlike, dwarfed by the scuffed Orbit600 robot shrouded in the amber dust of cobalt tailings. She didn’t need the AI’s personality software to recognise this prospector was concealing something. Limited eye contact, teeth aggressively troubling a liquorice stick, and his sweating groin subconsciously thrust forwards. Whatever he had done, his body language wasn’t disguising it.
“Your i.d. next”, requested Jaime. Without eye contact, the prospector leant forwards like a footballer scoring an extraordinary ‘no-look’ goal, pressing his ragged thumb to the screen while engaging in banter off-screen.
The Customer Services AI fought to process these three primary actions: verify the prospector’s identity, analyse and report on the Orbit600’s operating system, and harmonise their rental agreement terms with BudBots.
Jaime’s screen glowed green, confirming that Pythagoras Obviamb III was the lessee of X0783.91. And he was paid up, which was a first for Jaime’s day.
Jaime read Pythagoras the diagnostic highlights: “Software is fine. Battery is charging effectively. Dexterity is unimpeded. Sealant is working: minimal dust intrusion”.
Jaime and Pythagoras both knew that ‘dust’ was the key indicator. Each robot’s internal sensors report on particle pollution, with spikes hinting at either poor sealant adhesion or unwarranted opening.
Prospectors could always make a few dollars by selling parts to the ‘mobile chop shops’ – bands of hyper-skilled schoolgirls, live-scavenging parts for building off-grid hybrid warriors for the Kyoni Clans or augmented concubines for the lavish courts of the Dahomey Empire.
Pythagoras implored, “Please help me. He runs down, exhausted, in a couple of hours. Swap me another, squire, please.”
“Show me your controller”, demanded Jaime.
Her eyes picked up the mood-change several seconds before the personality software confirmed heat signatures associated with contrition and lies.
“The problem is not my controller, squire!”, ventured Pythragoras, his eyes burrowing into the screen, across 9000 kilometres of water-electrons, “I charge this baby every day”.
Yet the signs of hacking were visible to both naked and digital eyes’.
Flurries of scratches at the controller’s edges where small precision tools had sought an entry.
Jaime shook her head solemnly. The batteries and Mech router had probably been swapped out. $75 for each. At most. But the chopshop’s inferior replacements had started to fail long before Pythagoras had been able to spend his ‘winnings’ on good times.
Jaime sighed and began reading the legally-binding statement, “Sir, your rental agreement is voided by interference with our products….”
“But I have done nothing wrong! And I have paid for the next 18 months….”
by submission | Apr 3, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Gianatasio
*Click, click, click!*
It’s on every channel. See what I mean? The show’s been off the air for years — what the hell? It wasn’t even that popular.
There’s nothing on the screen.
Excuse me?
There’s nothing on the screen.
Pfft. Maddening. Maybe the batteries in the remote are dead. Oh man, they’re corroded right through. Are these double- or triple-A’s?
Triples.
You sure? Well, we don’t have any triple-A’s. I suppose I could just get up and change channels. O-kay…
That won’t make any difference.
Lemme try. SEE! EVERY CHANNEL. Can’t be a marathon. On one station, sure. But not all of them.
There’s nothing on the screen.
Well, actually, I kinda liked the show. It had monsters. I think it was about… I can’t remember what it was about or what it was called… It was scary and people always got killed in gnarly ways…
There’s nothing on the screen.
What do you mean. Just look, it’s in perfect synch on every channel. The exact same scene from the same episode. See! What are the odds? What are the chances?
Just stop, OK?
Stop what? Watching TV? I like it on. I like the sound it makes. I don’t like when it gets too quiet… When I can hear…
There’s nothing on the screen.
I… what? Why do you keep saying that?
No show. No picture. No “exact same scene from the same episode in perfect synch on every channel.” In fact, it’s blank on every channel. It was blank the whole time you were fiddling around with the clicker. It’s been blank for a long time.
What? I…
Ah, the majestic motorways! Driving in the open air. With the top down. Breeze blowing back our hair. Well, my hair, at any rate.
What are you talking that about?
Trees and hills blurring past. Empty skies above. I read somewhere that you could drive clear around the world. Start and finish at the exact same spot. I think a ferry’s involved someplace, maybe a couple of trains. Still, it’s mostly driving. How about a long, leisurely drive in the country? Of course, there’s not much to see. Overgrown luncheonettes and abandoned trailers with the windows smashed, doors open wide and empty business suits flapping like flags in the breeze. Those images have a sort of grandeur and resonance, don’t you think? Like crumbling viaducts and slime-skinned rivers and broken roads crammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic that hasn’t moved in years. Eight lanes in both directions going nowhere….
Shut up! Shut up!
You know, it’s very rude of you to point that thing at me. STOP CLICKING! That’s not going to work. You can’t turn me off. I’m here. I’m real. But you’re not.
**Click!**
by submission | Apr 1, 2021 | Story |
Author: Matt Forshaw
It will not heal because I pick at it. I peel back little dry threads of skin from the edges of the wound, and they unwind around its circumference like old, coarse rope. When the scabs on the surface thicken like dirty ice growing solid over a lake, I lift them up, finding edges I can get a finger nail under. Sometimes I look at it under a small times ten magnifying hand lens, and I marvel at all the textures and layers; sometimes it’s like a tiny, obscure bas-relief sculpture, other times some vast open top mine, excavated from a convoluted plain of skin, seen from far away and high above. I chart the healing process, as I delay it by my constant interference.
~
Just another shitty, no stakes Damage night. Bunch of posers with the latest salve and designer scars. Come down to the Wallows from uplevel to spend half a night with us exotic scum, so very fucking legit. Take some full band simvids to parade in front of their friends back home, the ones who are too scared or too sensible to come themselves. They’re tolerated with varying degrees of grace – no one wants a dead rich kid on their hands after all, but there’s a lot of good mischief to be had short of that; scamming, robbing, beating, the occasional spot of kidnapping and my personal favourite, just plain fucking with ‘em. Maybe if we spent less time fighting each other over the scraps that drift down from uplevel we wouldn’t be in this mess.
~
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My arm disappears in a blaze of light and heat – that’s ultrawhite phosphorus for you – and I watch as the outline of my radius and ulna is described in glowing red before crumbling away to dust. I’d already slathered near on a whole pot of CSPA over my arm before holding the incendiary grenade tightly in my left hand and pulling the pin, and I was very pleased it was doing what it said on the tin, and I’m 1200 credits richer and I didn’t feel a thing, brilliant!
~
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~
Everything is very dark and I can’t stop moving walking scratching scratching hitting and my head hurts or it would if I could feel fucking SOMETHING but everything’s just empty emptying empty and slow and my mouth is full but can’t taste a thing then somewhere else where am I where is I what am I not am I everything tearing rending out and away and away away gone.
by submission | Mar 31, 2021 | Story |
Author: David Barber
“The procedure is not an estimate of your lifespan,” the voice said. “It is not like actuary tables. Nor will it tell you the cause of your death. All living things follow a trajectory in time which the scan tracks to the moment of your death. You can ask to know that date.”
Frank was here because of Amy. Amy was here because of cancer. For her, remission was like waiting under an anvil that hung by a thread, and she thought the Fate Scan would take away that uncertainty.
The idea of death left Frank in a panic, so at first he refused to talk about it. Then he embarrassed himself with a councillor.
“Look, it’s not about me being in charge,” he told the woman. “She just makes wrong choices!”
Amy and the counsellor exchanged a look.
Over the years, silicon had interacted less and less with flesh. We were like a divorcing couple sharing a house until one moved out. With a lot of resentment on our part. Then recently silicon had announced a process the media took to calling a Fate Scan.
“The procedure is already complete,” the voice said. “But the results will be withheld until I am satisfied you understand the consequences of knowing the outcome.”
They sat in a room that was all milky white glass, except for the huge mirrored sphere, hovering without visible means of support.
If silicon wanted to reassure people, they had misjudged badly.
“Are there any questions?”
Frank tore his gaze from the fun-house mirror reflections of themselves and glanced at Amy. She was intent on the sphere, though the voice came from all round them.
He couldn’t help himself. “So, this scan of yours is never wrong?”
“All living things have a trajectory in time which the procedure follows to its end. An analogy would be a security camera in this room. At some point the camera records you leaving. Do you doubt the camera could do that correctly?”
Frank was about to argue but Amy gripped his arm.
“Everything you have done and will do has a trajectory with a beginning and an end. It is a view of time you have yet to grasp.”
“The Appointment in Samarra,” murmured Amy.
There was a silence. Frank didn’t get it, but he wasn’t going to admit that.
“Are there any questions?”
“It’d be the same date even if you weren’t scanned then,” he declared.
“That is correct.”
“Then why…”
“Because knowing,” Amy interrupted. “You might choose to live your life differently.”
“So what’s in it for your sort? I mean, something’s going on here.”
Amy knew the signs. She could hear him getting angry.
“We offer the procedure because we always did. As I said, a concept of time you do not grasp.”
“I think we’re your lab rats…”
“The procedure is voluntary.”
“Sure, for now.”
“Frank, please.”
“Do you both wish to be told your dates?”
“No!” and “Just me,” said Frank and Amy over each other.
Frank went to wait outside, though there were some parting shots before he left.
He was slouching by the car. He didn’t look angry now, in fact Amy thought he looked scared.
“Hey, where you going?” he called when he saw her hesitate, then turn away.
To live my life differently, she thought.
by submission | Mar 30, 2021 | Story |
Author: Brian C. Mahon
Blank mind – you got to have a blank mind and no emotion out there. I do my thirty-second deep breathing routine, knock loose the naughty words from my cerebrum, and stare at the door latch. Is it worth it? A man needs to eat after all, but how badly?
At first, it was just an innocent inconvenience: advertising on all streaming services, sponsored ads on every website, targeted ads embedded between your friends and friends of friends’ posts. Next big thing after cell phones was to go buy those sweet, sweet Toniq glasses, with enhanced personal identity security features that seamlessly integrated all your social media divines through a single visual aperture! By the power of mixed reality, you could safely navigate outdoors while live-streaming with up to five different social media providers!
Not so bad, right? It came with a security guarantee and customer service standing by in case of a compromised account.
Then Toniq, which had all the exclusive contracts with the Big Five, got bought by an offshoot of the Big Five’s largest player, Community. Community did one even better and combined Toniq’s internet-capable mixed reality package with GPS and the TAF, their proprietary Total Anonymity Filter. Now you could see in real-time whatever *anyone in sight* posted, whatever they said transcribed to their preferred service, while the TAF kept their identity safe from non-friends. After Community bought the smallest of the Big Five, it managed to convince people, one Terms of Service retcon too many, that facial recognition was the next needed convenience. Broadcast moods on the fly, auto-login to store accounts to see available discounts at participating vendors the moment you walk by.
Now when Community teamed up with the currency app developers to “streamline shopping into a more enjoyable purchasing experience”? That’s when it really started to slide. Staring at any participating company’s product for three seconds adds that consumable to their cloud-side cache of your desires. Probably not so bad if you’re in the country, but in the city? Product prostitution.
It’s a short walk to the bodega. Keeping your head down to avoid the flood of bullshit thought bubbles from invading your inner peace is now a soul survival tactic. The social web’s got us all ready to be picked apart. If you’re watching anything but your shoes, life is a rushing shit stream of “bet he sits when he pees”, “there’s one less person the world needs”, “ima punch his ass out lol”, et cetera, et cetera. The TAF gave us humanity at its unfiltered, unpasteurized finest.
I’d love to think we’d have resisted this mess if we saw it for a tidal wave than a creeping tide. This constant exposure, the dissolution of privacy, of self, is too much for the mind to stay right. Too much for mine at least.
But seriously – keep a blank mind, no emotion, and keep yourself close to your chest. Isolation is a steady zen.
by submission | Mar 29, 2021 | Story |
Author: Thomas E. Simmons
The rooms are less than luxurious. Indeed, there are no rooms as such. Instead, an assortment of squalid pup tents greets each visitor.
Pitched there haphazardly among the campsites nearest the inclines are numerous corrosive mists of carbon dioxide. There, in the fog, one almost stumbles upon them – the tents; rows of them but none too straight. Bent. Tarpaulin triangles with lightweight poles thrust harshly through ringlets in the canvas and lightly scratching the surface. Those poles will scrape away the gills from the fishless tourists – even the casual ones. (As if there are any other kind.)
The cheeky hurricanes overpopulating the less attractive neighborhoods are as insufferable as the boulders masquerading as maître d’s. They’ll tire you out before you’ve escaped the train depot. On a positive note, however, they rarely demand a tip.
Leave your gills at home or at least secured in your Samsonites with their adorable little locks and charmingly undersized wheels since the surface temperature exceeds the highest setting on most household ovens by 400° or so and the atmospheric pressure is a crushing 90 bars, making the possibility of palms trees, coral, or even seraphs remote at best. A consular mocking at worst. It’s hot.
One’s luggage locks will be replaced by soldered teardrops before one resets one’s wristwatch. And the wheels will drop out of their chassis like pregnant pits. There are no flies in the ointment because the flies are bits of ash. Torn muscle. Poorly crafted limericks. Jots. Invariably, they’ll stick in your teeth. Bring floss.
The black and white photographs of the country’s navel reveal something like the inside of a backyard grill that’s been left on all night to cook itself to death, while the color photographs disclose yellowed tints from the smeary mustard sands. Smeared vindictively. It’s as if she’s cooked her own navel and served it to herself on a platter too hot to touch and then finger-painted on herself with a slightly rotted flaxen rouge. It’s as if she’s shoved a moth into a candle’s flame and held it there, cauterizing her clenching.
It’s all rather banal. Like a mud-covered lantern, the coastlines are ignored by the locals and for good reason.
And it’s warmer than a blast oven – if its climate was a kiln it would bust itself apart and spill open like a gourd. Hotter than an apogee furnace into which someone might cram an accidentally suffocated corpse – to remove any trace of it. To make it go away. To make bones be bygone.
Cooking long after the springs are punched out. Cooking and cooking – roasting without rest.
So, consider sandals, a few smart linen outfits, a sun hat for the ladies or a rakish pith helmet for the gentlemen. Leave the wool blazers in Amiens. You won’t miss them. Even the evenings are stifling. They turn one’s crotch and armpits into soup. A soup without any seasoning and fit only for savages. And don’t even think of inquiring about croutons. They’re seldom available.
Indeed, culinary options are limited. A rival travel guide warns: ‘Unpacking, you’ll find only a too-thick-hot-gelatin or overcooked magma on the room service list of options’ (tactfully omitting the wrench-like mercury-filled bread sticks, despite their repetitive prominence on every menu).
Another hisses: ‘Spare, terse, desiccated, uncompromising.’
“A life-changing destination for the suicidal,’ wisecracks the last.
Accordingly, we recommend arranging one’s exit visa prior to arrival. Don’t rely on the expertise of their functionaries. The agents are irredeemable. It’s almost as if custom and immigration forms haven’t beset – or been invented there – yet.
One and one-half stars.
Editor’s Note: ‘Ms Lonely Planet’ was previously published by Rue Scribe
