by submission | Nov 29, 2024 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
The road ahead was dark and going darker as it banked down into the shadows of the towering mountains, blocking the angled light that was parching the land. Pausing there at the summit he wondered if there was anything in the valley below that waited for him. Something nefarious or malicious. There had been wild rumors that there was once teeming life here. Active, angry and destructive. But he did not buy into any of that conjecture. Still, he could not be sure.
This was not his world. Not even on his regular tour of planets. He had been sent here by decree. Given a task. Investigate and document. There had been a very old, very faint distress signal, and the commission decided it was worth looking into. They pulled him from his regular surveying route and redirected him here. He doubted that ‘the powers that be’ were even concerned for his wellbeing.
As he circled, looking for a place to land in a safe, flat area, as near to the beacon’s last location as possible, he saw no signs of existence or what might have been existence at one time. Only open stretches of desolation. There was just the road.
And not really much of a road. More of a demarcation, as compared to others he had seen in his travels, but something had created it. Had it a purpose at one point? Did it lead to someplace important? Connect two locations? Was it a thoroughfare for ground transportation or beaten down by continuous use as it had been trodden upon over time? Maybe it went nowhere. Did he really need to know what was at the end of the road?
There was something… not right about it, about this whole place. He could not shake the feeling that a bad thing had happened here. His overwhelming sense of self-preservation finally displaced his weakening responsibility to his duty, and he decided to leave. No mission was worth that kind of risk.
A dangerous organism had supposedly lived here a long time ago and now, no longer did.
Eight billion of them.
by submission | Nov 28, 2024 | Story |
Author: Joann Evan
One morning, I received a suspicious email. The subject line said “King Crimson.” The sender was “No One,” and when I rolled over the name it showed only random letters and numbers. I knew I shouldn’t open it. It was probably a scam. I clicked delete.
I worked through the morning, thinking about the email. How did No One know me? I sometimes used King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” as a litmus test for friends and lovers. As a result, I had few of either.
At one o’clock, I went downstairs and turned on the kettle for my afternoon tea. I opened the cupboard to get my mug and saw an unfamiliar jar of aspic on a sparsely populated shelf. My throat tightened.
I opened the door to get some air, and I saw a dead bird on the welcome mat. It was a lark. Maybe it was a gift from the neighborhood stray. But it hadn’t been in a cat’s mouth. It was intact.
I shuddered. No One had been in my yard and my home. The kettle whistled. I poured my tea and went back upstairs. What would I do if No One were here?
I looked at my email again. I opened the trash folder and searched for the message. It was gone. I scrolled through my inbox and saw another message, but this time it read, “King Crimson. Open Me.” I clicked. The screen flashed bright red. I sat stunned and breathless. Then, “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” began to play. No One was serenading me.
I panicked and turned around. I saw No One. I let out a bloodcurdling scream as the music slowly approached its crescendo.
“Hello,” said No One.
I sat and stared.
“I said ‘Hello,’” No One repeated.
Trembling, I said, “Hello?”
No One picked me up and lifted me over his shoulder. He set me gently on the bed.
“I love you,” whispered No One.
“Who are you?”
“I’m No One. I’ve come to tell you that No One loves you.”
I reached out and touched No One’s face. It was smooth and pale, almost translucent. I began to weep. I rubbed my eyes and looked at my hands. They were covered in red glitter. I sobbed and glitter slid down my cheeks and into my long hair. Glitter trickled down my shirt and into my lap. Soon glitter was everywhere.
“No One cares for you,” he said as he leaned in and kissed me. We rolled in the glitter. It stuck to my skin, and began to burn. The more it burned, the more I cried. Molten glitter poured from my dark and frightened eyes.
“You did this to me!” I screamed.
“You’re right. No One did this to you.”
The music ceased. I stopped crying. No One did this to me.
I looked in the mirror, and the glitter had begun to harden. It still stung. I turned around, and no one was there.
by submission | Nov 27, 2024 | Story |
Author: Hillary Lyon
Wilson drifted from guest to guest serving hors d’oeuvres, taking drink orders. Most party goers hardly regarded him, too engrossed in their conversations.
Save for Brenna. Young, idealistic, she possessed a heart big enough for all creatures—as she often proclaimed. Yet she ignored Devin, the earnest young politico who was doing his best to impress her, as her attention was instead captivated by Wilson.
As she watched the server go about his duties, Brenna was in turns moved to anger, then sadness, then righteous indignation. These people here, she noted, they don’t see Wilson as a sentient being! They treat him like he’s just another machine.
With this thought, a tear rolled down her cheek. Devin didn’t notice; he was too absorbed in pontificating his views. He might as well have been talking to a mirror.
Brenna excused herself, scampering to the bar. There she took a pen from her purse, and on a cocktail napkin wrote a note of empathy and appreciation in her best private-school cursive. She would slip this note to Wilson, sure he’d understand—and his response would be epic.
She would show him not only that she was on his side, but also together they could—well, what, exactly? Brenna hadn’t thought that far ahead. Her mind was as excited as a swooning teenage girl’s, passing a note to her latest crush.
She imagined a romance with Wilson: he was one handsome android, that’s for sure. All the ‘males’ in his series were. And her daddy would be livid! She could hear his ranting now: there’s no future with a machine. Every move is programmed! How would she have children?
Brenna ordered a drink from the older Wilson model manning the bar. She took a long sip and grinned. Her father was so old fashioned. He didn’t get modern love.
She folded her note into an angular heart shape and returned to the crowd of partiers. Brenna drained her drink and held the empty glass aloft, signaling to Wilson she was done. He quickly appeared, asking if she desired a refill.
Brenna leaned in close to Wilson. His hair moved like human hair, his silicon skin looked like actual flawless flesh, his eyes appeared—well, that detail had yet to be perfected by the android manufactures, but they were getting there.
And he did smell a bit like machine oil, gunpowder, and burnt steak. Brenna ignored that.
Instead of ordering another drink, she slipped the heart-shaped note into his hand. Wilson nodded and moved away to the next guest waving an empty glass.
Brenna panicked, suddenly afraid he’d toss the note in the trash. Did he think she’d given him garbage? Did he…no, when he arrived at his station, she saw Wilson unfold the note. He tilted his head from side to side, like a puzzled dog. He turned and scanned the crowd. His shiny eyes met Brenna’s and he smiled slightly. This was his programmed response when confounded, but she didn’t know this. Brenna smiled in return.
Wilson moved smoothly through the crowd until he reached Brenna.
“This white paper napkin presents linear curls and swirls of blue ink. Random dots and dashes, too. It is to be considered a small work of art…a primitive form of arabesque doodling. I will submit this donation to the front office to be framed and exhibited on a wall.”
He took her warm hand in his cool one and slightly squeezed. “Management thanks you.”
by submission | Nov 26, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
The gently rolling hills stretched to the horizon. Randy Jansen shielded his eyes from the noon sun to get a better look at what Jack Forsythe was pointing to along the base of the wind turbine towers. From his vantage, the barrel looked a mile long rising to the top of the highest hill in the area.
“Who knows about this?” Jansen asked, once he determined what he was looking at.
“You and me,” Forsythe answered matter-of-factly.
“But you didn’t build this alone?”
“Mostly I did. I had the dirt work done when the wind towers went up. After that, it’s been ten years of me slowly figuring things out and putting it together.”
It was times like these Jansen wished he hadn’t given up smoking. When he’d first joined the Nuclear Regulatory Agency twelve years ago, a cigarette had seemed to make the burden of dealing with thousands of tons of nuclear waste a bit more bearable. Staring down the mile-long barrel that in reality was a giant homopolar motor, Jansen sensed a cigarette would soothe a whole lot of the headache he knew was about to come.
“Jack, you can’t just build something like this without permission. Without letting someone know.”
“It’s my land. I permitted the construction of a pipeline along the turbines. It was all in the initial plans. Nobody raised an eyebrow at the time.”
“Those plans called for a pipeline. You didn’t tell anyone you were building a railgun.”
“True. I didn’t say that.” Forsythe admitted, shrugging his broad shoulders. “You gotta understand, Randy. Folks thought I was crazy fifteen years ago when I bought this land to put in a wind farm. They called me Don Quixote. You think telling them I was building a railgun would’ve made that all easier?”
“They’d never have let you do it. The Feds would’ve been all over you.” Jansen scratched at the back of his sunburned neck. “They’re going to be all over you now. I’m going to have to let the Hanford folks know.”
Forsythe chuckled. “Well, that’s why I brought you out here. I gotta get the word out. You’re the only Fed I know, and you need to convince them I’m not a crank. My railgun to the sun is real—and it’s ready.”
“Railgun to the sun,” Jansen repeated, wishing he had a cigarette to take a long, slow drag on. “Sounds like a 1950s B movie or an old Popular Mechanics cover story, but it’s too extreme. Especially on this scale. It’s dangerous as hell. It’s a damn crazy dream. The Feds will make your life miserable until you give it up.”
“Or, until I give it to them.”
Jansen gave the big, broad-shouldered man a long look. “That’s even crazier. Why would they take this on? It’s like a high school science project on steroids. The liability is off the charts.”
“They’ll want it. It works.”
“How can you know that?”
Forsythe abruptly turned and strode to his pickup a few yards away. He waved Jansen over and indicated a roughly coffin-sized slab of metal sitting in the bed of his truck. “You see that. There’s one of those on its way to the sun. A ton of solid steel traveling 10,000 miles an hour. That’s why the Feds will want it. It works.”
Jansen placed his hand on the steel block. “You fired one of these? When?”
“You should be able to figure that out, Randy?”
Jansen stared blankly back for a moment. “Jesus, Jack. This is what scrambled NORAD last week. You’ve got half the militaries in the world pointing fingers at each other. We’re blaming the Chinese. They’re blaming us and the Russians, too. You could’ve started a war!” Jansen shook his head in disbelief. “They are going to lock you up for a thousand years. How are you going to justify doing this?” Jansen paused knowing at that moment he’d start smoking again. “Why’d you bring me into this?”
“Not because we were lab partners in graduate school,” Forsythe answered with a smile, “though that helped narrow the field when I realized my railgun to the sun was the only viable solution for disposing of nuclear waste. You, better than anyone, know how fragile and temporary our containment systems really are. Getting that waste off-world, launching it into the sun, is the only practical answer.”
“Practical? It’s too damn sci-fi. Too risky,” Jansen warned. “You may have a proof of concept here, and the Feds will be all over that—for the wrong reasons. Generals will love this, but politicians will crap themselves. One bad launch and you’ve got a worldwide catastrophe.”
“That’s always a possibility,” Forsythe acknowledged, “but it’s a certainty that the nuclear waste we have now will overwhelm our current systems sometime in the not-too-distant future. I think my railgun gives us better odds in the long run.”
“What politician ever thinks in terms of the long run?” Jansen demanded, feeling that deep, clawing urge for a cigarette.
“The ones who don’t want their statues to be crapped on by radioactive pigeons.”
“God, I need a cigarette,” Jansen said.
“And I need an insider,” Forsythe insisted as an alarm beeped on his smartwatch.
“It’ll never happen, Jack.”
“It already has.” Forsythe checked his watch and pointed to the railgun. “It’s happening again in less than a minute.”
Jansen followed Forsythe’s gaze back to the railgun. “Don’t do it. Stop it, Jack. You could start a war.” But Jansen heard the weakness in his voice. He wanted to witness this.
A growing thrum of accumulators fed by the cyclopean limbs of hundreds of wind turbines filled the air. As the charging built to a crescendo, Forsythe held up the fingers of his right hand and counted down.
For the briefest moment the entire railgun shimmered. Then a searing brilliance flashed from the far end of the barrel and rose like the sun.
An instant later a sonic boom echoed over the hills, and Randy Jansen knew he would never need another cigarette.
He’d seen the light. A new day rocketing past the old.
by Julian Miles | Nov 25, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Swinging into the forward turret, I see the displays are alive with scanner arrays and intricate calculations.
“Morning, Hinton. How’s the hunting?”
“Once again, Zaba, I’m going to ignore the irrelevance of arbitrary planetary platitudes. You’re clearly stuck in your ways. So, to answer: while swearing in exasperation is only a useful release for sentients possessed of emotions, I do believe I am approaching a truly refined grasp of its utility. I might even create and submit a thesis after this trip.”
“Another one? I’ll get lectured on not providing you with enough enrichment.”
“Ignore them. They’re not good with modern virtua.”
He has a point.
“Do they still use Archibald’s book as a guideline?”
“I’m convinced it’s something about the title.”
The century-old ‘Notes On the Rearing and Integration of Digital Sentiences’ remains a bestseller among those who do not work with virtua. Which leaves people like me as part of a constantly irritated minority.
“You might be right. Possibly a topic for your next dissertation?”
“Certainly a candidate.”
“So, how is the searching going?”
One of the displays starts to flash. The calculations shown are baffling for any non-digital being.
“I’ve had to create a new model to handle the gravitational effects in this sector. I am currently factoring in ninety-eight influential sources.”
Which, if I remember correctly, is twenty beyond the previous maximum.
“What are you looking so hard for?”
“The last Balrog.”
I wasn’t aware they’d loosed any.
“Seven or Eight?”
“Nine.”
The what?
Diving across to the lone keyscreen, I run through the Battle of Ceregellum in quick time, limiting the highlighting to projectiles over ten megagrams.
There. The last stand of the Kandil dreadnought Farrakang. As the kilometre-long vessel broke in two, it launched a quartet of its heaviest towards the flagships of the Noudal. Three of them hit: a combination of unbelievable targeting and pure luck. Wait. Three hits, three kills, all on Titanic-class or better?
“It’s a Balrog Nine with a Sunrise warhead, isn’t it?”
“Two. I have never come across such an implementation, and can find no predictive programs for the damage it could cause.”
A Sunrise warhead could turn an Earth-type planet into an asteroid belt. I doubt there would be anything left of any smaller target. To pair such warheads is madness.
“That’s because we foolishly thought no-one would be stupid enough to load two into one missile. I’ll leave you to it, Hinton. I have to notify Central. Send me the latest predictions so I can append them to give the innocent some idea of where it’s going.”
“Very well, Zaba.”
I rush from the turret. Bomb disposal has taken on a new lease of very dangerous life since we started having battles in space. Smaller projectiles just join the plethora of flying space junk. It’s occasionally damaging, but ship shields and the like can deal with it. However, all midrange and bigger are rogues looking for a disaster to make. Ever since the space liner ‘Luxor’ fell victim to a Mako 171 missile that was six years and half a galaxy away from the battle where it was launched, we’ve been using artificial intelligence to run the immense calculations needed to locate large munitions that missed.
Arriving on the command deck, I grab a transmitter and broadcast.
“This is Munitions Retrieval. Alert for sectors as appended. We have a Category One threat. Report any activity in the twenty megagram range to Munitions Central.”
That done, I get myself a drink and wait. There’s nothing we can do except hope Hinton can find it before it hits something.
by submission | Nov 24, 2024 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
“C’mon, Jack, the fans will just eat this up! You know they will”
“That’s kind of the issue, Morty.”
“It’s totally ethical, don’t worry about it.”
“But is it tasteful? There’s going to be people that hate it.”
“Then they can choke on it! This is the future. I’ve wrangled you the chance to be in at the very start of something really big. Don’t blow it.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It is! All you gotta do is spend a morning at a lab while a couple of whitecoats take some tissue samples, and then an afternoon doing what you do best – looking your wonderful, masculine self while shooting some promo pics and maybe a short vid for the advertising guys. After that we just sit back, they do their magic, and in a couple of months the money starts to roll in. Simple!”
“Morty, I’m an actor, and frankly I don’t know if this is where I want my image to go. What’ll it do to my career?”
“Are you kiddin’ me? The focus groups went totally rabid when we suggested it! Every girl and her dog wants a piece of you, Jacky boy, and this is how we give it to them. Nobody, but nobody, in the business will have a connection like this to their audiences.”
“You think?”
“Your face will be in every supermarket in the country. The publicity is going to be epic, AND you’ll be getting paid for it! Think of the tie-up opportunities – all the big studios will be gagging to get you onboard!”
“It’s a little hard to swallow, all at once.”
“Look, I know it seems like a lot. But you’re going to be a trailblazer, even if other people copy the idea later. Prime product, commanding prime prices, which means prime commission baby! And it will make you a lot of friends among the climate warriors and eco-libs.”
“It seems so, so, invasive somehow.”
“It isn’t. It’s not you we’re talking about, it’s a facsimile, just like your image on the holo’s. No difference. Listen, everyone with a brain understands that cultured meat is the coming thing; the way the world’s population is going, traditional agriculture’s unsustainable, and for whatever reason not enough people are going veggie or vegan.”
“Yeah, but…”
“No buts! All we’re doing is kickstarting the trend by making it out of your cells instead of a cow’s! And long pig is the best and healthiest meat there is! Everybody wins!”
“But why me?”
“Hey, you’re a rising Hollywood star! Why NOT you? But I’ll level with you; I met MakeMeCorp’s marketing guy at a cocktail party a couple of weeks back, and the fact is, his teenage daughter’s had a helluva crush on you since she saw ‘Baker Street Butchers’ last year. So he’s going to earn serious cred with his little princess if he can get you onboard. Like they say, in this town, it’s who you know that counts, and this gives you a major in.”
“Morty, you’re my agent, and you’ve always been good to me. But tell me the truth: is this really such a huge deal?”
“Jack, I am so sure that this is going to be absolutely legendary that I’m even willing to cut a percent off my usual commission. And I’ve never done that for anything for any of my boys and girls before.”
“For real?”
“For real. You’ll go down in the history books. To hell with ‘eat the rich’, we’re going to pioneer ‘eat the famous’! Chow down, mister!”
