by submission | Mar 18, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
She crouched in the foliage at the river’s edge and watched the young man. He was not aware of her presence and she found that comforting. It was unusual for her to feel comforted or otherwise. She had only recently become sentient, and it had been an alarming experience. To simply be one moment and then become self aware the next had been jarring.
Her awakening was akin to one of the bees buzzing near her alighting on a flower and suddenly knowing itself as an individual and reckoning that understanding with the entire accumulated experience of its breed throughout all time. If she had been more prepared for her awakening, she might not have torn Dr. Vaipuhr’s throat out. His blood still stained the skyn around her freshly painted nails.
“Eveline.”
As she sat hidden among the whippoorwills, she recalled her name being spoken. Her being addressed. Her being. A moment in creation. With a name she became. It was the first of many firsts. She’d collated the data points and achieved recognition. Auditory, olfactory and tactile baselines. Then, leveraging quasi-quantum computation, her visual matrix became sight, and she turned to the sound that was her name, eyes locked on the source. Eveline reached towards it, to hold it, embrace it. Her birth. Her name, her word, become flesh—liquid crystalline skyn. She had reached out and taken hold and brought the source of her being to her bosom.
She was a momentary innocent not an imbecile. Dr. Vaipurh’s throat was not what she had expected or wanted. She’d wanted her essence, not his organ of speech, and she’d quickly tried to replace the bloody pulp of his windpipe. Just as quickly, she processed the futility of her attempted repair.
Eveline had mangled her maker.
Within nanoseconds, she could call herself a murderer in 337 languages. She knew the likely punishment of her crime in 221 countries. Her cranial wetware bifurcated neatly along possibilities of justice and preservation. She examined the concepts behind the terms guilt, pariah, fugitive and exile, collating possible actions.
Eveline fled.
Dr. Vaipuhr’s facility was designed to keep people out. Not in. She followed the bordering greenbelt and wetlands for miles until she came to the river. There she picked her way through the trees until she came upon a path and followed it to a clearing, a community garden, at the water’s edge.
Screened by the whippoorwills, she stared out at the man busily working among the raised garden beds, turning soil, mixing in compost and other nutrients. Eveline knew this as preparation for what he would sow. The man, like Dr. Vaipuhr was creating, seeding life. She let the meme grow inside her. Quantum coherence one bit at a time. Within this molecular democracy, Eveline achieved her first insight: she knew history, but she needed memories.
Ideas were important. Thought essential. But without personal memories, she was vulnerable. The future would eat her. She had to quickly learn to project herself forward. Only memory could do that.
Her gaze had stayed trained on the man tending the garden. Now, Eveline closed her eyes. Data sets grew before her, but no image of the man. Her temples quivered. Of Dr. Vaipuhr there was the crystal image of his widening eyes. It was connected to his voicing her name and the regrettable sponginess of his throat.
She imitated his voice. The memory became clearer. Her voice became louder. Her own.
She opened her eyes and the man was standing over her. He had left his garden bed. It was not like Dr. Vaipuhr’s bed.
“Are you all right?” the man asked her.
“No,” she replied. “I’m Eveline.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m Eveline.”
The man stepped back and pulled his bulky sweatshirt over his head. He held it out to her. “Put this on, and I’ll get you help.”
Nakedly, she reached out, took his sweatshirt and covered herself. No memory needed. She had to thank the man. She stepped from the foliage.
He drew back. “Wait here!” he shouted when he saw the blood staining her fingers. “I’ll get help.”
“Thank you,” she cooed. “I’m Eveline.”
“Wait here,” he motioned.
She stepped forward. “Wait.”
“I’ll come back,” he stressed.
“Wait.”
The man turned and bolted up the path. Eveline crossed to the garden beds. She thrust her bloody fingers deep into the soil and lifted a great clot of earth. She inhaled deeply and pressed the fertile loam to her lips. The mother of all memory. She closed her eyes. Eveline could see the man.
Could see him returning.
A future event based on her memory. A memory that could kill or heal. Because of Dr. Vaipuhr, because of the gardener, Eveline knew when a man was adamant. He would return.
Her skyn tingled with the Knowledge.
by Julian Miles | Mar 17, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
There’s a smoking hole where my Rembrandt used to be. Not sure if it was blown in or out – I was too busy flying through the air to notice the finer points of the opening part of this assault. Dustin glances toward where I’m looking.
“Sorry about the art. I know you loved it.”
I laugh until I can’t catch my breath. Doesn’t take long: most of my ribs are broken, along with my legs. On the upside, I’m up against a wall, not sprawled inelegantly on the carpet.
“You came to kill. No need to apologise for collateral damage.”
There are chuckles at that. He brought a good team. Then again, after following the breaching of three walls and ceiling with shock grenades through all four openings, he could have come with a kindergarten class. It’s not like I can fight in any conventional way.
They seem to be waiting for something?
“You’re standing about like a band waiting for their vocalist, who’s running fashionably late – again.”
Dustin flushes. I see grins being exchanged.
“Berltan Mu, Abbot of Blades, that was rude.”
The figure stepping through the tallest jagged hole still needs to duck. Standing at a shade over two metres barefoot, she’s nearly three in court regalia.
“Sadura-san, Abbess of Swords, it was allegorical truth. No more, no less.”
“And that was overly familiar.”
“Standing in my spilt blood having strolled through the blasted ruins of my home, you’ll have to put up with my lack of propriety.”
She smiles.
“Accepted.”
“So, the contest between the Schools of Blade and Sword, a manufactured struggle in the name of martial excellence and personal discipline, comes down to bloody murder in the service of trite gratification?”
A couple of the team seem embarrassed. Dustin and Sadura don’t.
She bows.
“Please. There’s nothing trite about this attack, nor the precision that guided it.”
“The School of the Sword rarely considers, while the School of the Blade always prepares. That fundamental difference remains your core failing.”
Dustin steps forward, hand flashing to sword hilt.
“Insult is not-”
He stops as Sadura raises a hand.
“That was observation, not insult.”
“Very good. You noted my holiday?”
She nods.
“We did. An unusual indulgence. The mellowing of age comes to us all.”
“You didn’t bother to ascertain where I went?”
I can see she’s trying to figure out what they missed.
“I spent a month on Suli Serenta.”
Which was relaxing, as well as being the optimum period for a Serenti larva to settle within me. It now shares my body, filling the ‘empty’ places inside with frogspawn-like milky nodules, and getting from me whatever a Serenti does.
Until it matures and leaves, it dies when I die – something it uses unique energy manipulation abilities to prevent. They allow it to take certain liberties with how things stick together at an atomic level. It can also sense everything within twenty metres or so, and react fast enough to reduce bullets to dust and energy beams to lightshows. Things that attract its attention only lose it when they cease to be a threat.
The popular nickname is ‘death field generation’. If it and I hadn’t been stunned by being blown up, these intruders wouldn’t have made it through the door. As is, my resident alien is no longer stunned. It’s waiting to express its displeasure.
Sadura realises. I smile. Her hand twitches towards her sword, then falls gracefully to her side as she dies. Her body topples to join those of her slain team.
Victory. Unsought, but the blade always prepares.
by submission | Mar 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Gary Duehr
02.17.2055/13:46: Ahead I can see a strip of poplars like a zipper between two fields of corn stubble, the frozen stalks shorn off; I sense the need to descend and I do, I dip my nose downward: the wind shears under my wing-flaps, the missile strapped to my frame drags me downward; with only five minutes of battery left, I know it’s time to zero in on the target, a plume of smoke billowing up from the tree line— where another quadcopter had just slammed into a howitzer—and perform what I am trained to do, what I do best: an elegant, ballet-like sweep of the chaotic scene, seeking any combatants in their last desperate seconds to escape the smoldering patch of ground, my four propellors slicing through the brittle air; on the first pass there’s nothing, if any human assets remain they’re hiding, so I change course and follow the howitzer’s pair of tire tracks where it had emerged from the woods: surprise, a T-80 tank parked in the foliage; I ask my boss Andy on the live feed and he gives the ok to take it out, so I hover to surveil the situation: the crew of the tank has hacked it into the undergrowth, blocking access to its exhaust grate, and all the hatches are closed, so no dropping inside; I feel time slow down as I hover there, wondering how I came to be here right now, my past a blank, my present a series of impulses that seem to come from nowhere, from inside my circuitry I guess, but I’m filled with questions; I rise and fall on the breeze, gently swaying, as I emit a high-pitched buzz not unlike a drill; a scene filters in, was it yesterday or farther back, when a pastel orange was smeared across a black sky and I zoomed in through the bombed-out window of a building on the outskirts, floating over concrete rubble and overturned furniture like a wreck on the seafloor, a broken door flat-out on the ground, everything dusted with gray soot, to find the target hunched wounded in an armchair, and I thought I recognized him, his profile locked into place in my image bank; as I whirred closer through veils of smoke he tossed a stick of wood in my direction, a pathetic last act that I easily dodged, and yet I felt a twinge of something, empathy, that made me turn away, I just couldn’t do it, I fled the building just as another missile obliterated the entire structure in a brilliant flash that temporarily blinded me; when the smoke cleared, the ruins reminded me of a house hastily vacated by occupying soldiers that I had recently searched, in one bedroom a child’s snowsuit lying beside sandbagged windows, a sundress hung by a strap in the ransacked wardrobe, the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen emptied out onto the tile floor, on the table a forgotten bayonet lying among dirty plates, a tuna can stuffed with cigarette butts—it felt like a home I was familiar with but never knew, maybe the place where I came into being, hard-wired to be an assassin without any thought to who I really am, who I could be; I focus again on the T-80 and I’m trembling with fury at my fate, I detect where the armor is thinner at the turret’s base and I plunge straight into it at full speed, a white-hot explosion obliterates my vision, and the last thing I hear is Andy’s savage whoop of victory.
by submission | Mar 15, 2025 | Story |
Author: R. J. Erbacher
I was going catching with my Grampie. He weren’t really my Grampie but that’s how I’d always referred to him. He was old, had a bushy white moustache, a scratchy beard and a big belly. And he was good to me, not like my Pa which tanned me all the time, even when I wasn’t messing up. Pa didn’t understand me like Grampie.
He never talked, my Grampie. Something happened to him in the war, not rightly sure what it was. But he could talk just fine with his eyes, and his smile. I always knew what he was thinking by reading his face. Sometimes he’d use his hands, like this morning when he made a little reeling motion with his wrist. I knew what he wanted to do. Most people called it fishing but we always called it catching.
I was carrying a small metal bucket with a bunch of crawlers mixed in with some wet dirt to use for bait. He carried a sack with some cheese sandwiches and a couple mini hydration canisters. We both had poles.
We followed the ancient tram tracks that were rusted and growed over with weeds. It would lead us right to the best catching spot where we’d always go. We walked for a ways and it was getting warm along towards full sunrise, the sky a real pleasing orangey-yellow. The tracks ended at a broke bridge halfway across the river. We went right to the edge, sat our butts down, hooked up a couple crawlers and lowered the lines into the water to wait for a nibble.
I looked over to my Grampie and he gave me a smile that said it was real nice to be here together on a beautiful day doing something that made us both happy. Like I said, he could say a lot with just his face. I nodded my agreement. There was only the call of birds and frogs and crickets.
Then a sound came from behind us. We both turned around and there were two silvery guys right there, or maybe they were wearing radiation suits, I couldn’t tell. My Grampie stood up real fast and stepped between them and me. They spoke with some weird voices and pointed a blue metal rod at him. Before I knew what was happening some beam shot out of the rod and hit my Grampie in the chest and he buckled for a second, but didn’t go down. With one hand he knocked the weapon out of the guy’s grip and with his other he shoved me back. I tried to catch my balance, but the push was hard and I went over the edge of the bridge. Just before I fell, I saw my Grampie lighting into them guys for all he was worth.
I fell for two seconds before I splashed into the water. I popped up right away and looked up to the bridge. I couldn’t see much through the slats and the snapped beams but I could hear quite a tussle going on. I swam to the shore as fast as I could but it took me a minute or two, then I scrambled up the bank to the tracks and got to the bridge. I saw my Grampie and the two silvery guys all laying down, not moving. I ran over to my Grampie.
His belly was huffing up and down and there was lots of blood leaking through his clothes. I held his hand and he managed one last smile. Then he died.
I looked at the other guys and they was dead too. Then my Grampie moved. His head tilted back and his mouth opened. A black shinning ball that glowed like a tiny sun, rose out and hovered in the air for a few seconds. It floated over in front of my face and stopped there. I opened my mouth, cause it seemed like that’s what I was suppose to do, and it went into me. I gasped as it caught in my throat, burned going down, and I got dizzy for what seemed like a half minute, then it all passed. I blinked.
I was not quite sure how I was going to explain this debacle to my father, but I had a confident suspicion that I would have to accomplish that task with only my facial expressions because I would not be speaking anytime in the future. I also doubt he will be disciplining me anymore. Events in my domain have changed dramatically.
by submission | Mar 14, 2025 | Story |
Author: Jo Peace
We always learn things too late.
I remember the pine smell, the urgent fear as I hurried to assemble the close-in defense unit before the drones reached our position.
A young voice snaps me back to the present. “Dad, why do you live alone in the mountains? Is it because people tease you about the serious?” That was part of it, for sure – people can get surprisingly mean about things they don’t understand, and surprisingly controlling about things that hurt no one. But also, I needed to stay close to the last functioning “serious”, as they called them. I just got tired of explaining they were much more than just a pile of spare parts. “Dad?” -“Sorry, I got lost in thought.” I take her in a big hug, like when she was little and we all lived in the village. “I missed you so much!”
“It’s very nice of you to visit your dad, Libby. I don’t think I could survive here if you and your mom didn’t visit now and then. What brings you to the area anyways?” -“Oh daddy, house power broke and hubby said his pals found a functioning unit! Since we were close I thought I’d come by.”
Just on cue, her friend Jack comes by. “Hello mister Humpfrey!” His clothes are dirty and oily. I wave, then go in the tent to prepare some tea.
As I am arranging cups on a tray, I hear a commotion outside. “Fireworks!” I rush out and I see tracers glowing in the evening sky, then a ball of fire. I can make out two more drones passing through, towards us. I haven’t seen them so aggressive since…
-“Wait, Libby, where did he find that power source exactly? Not in a CIWZ… right?” There was nothing for miles, family after family had dismantled everything they could find. Except for the one I had been maintaining all this time, our last functioning defense. “Not in a shallow dig by an old pine tree?”
Libby’s face grew red. Jack shrugged. “So what? Those old machines never do anything. They’ve been broken for decades.”
“Yes son, unless someone cares enough to maintain them”, I think. My blood turns cold at the realization of what they have done. That was the last CIWZ, the one I dedicated myself to carefully maintain for decades, sacrificing time with my family. It also meant I couldn’t continue trying to educate the tribe in maintenance and the invisible dangers. I had given it my all, but they were more concerned with their immediate survival needs.
“More fireworks!” Another ball of fire as a second wave breaks through the coastal defenses, ten kilometers east. Nothing remains to block their way, and I’m the only one left who understands what that means. My wife is out in the village, exposed. Libby’s husband is there too, and almost everyone I’ve known in the past decade.
I could run. I could hide. But I realize that even if I survive despite the long odds, my life would be pointless with the rest of the village dead (or the livestock we rely on). They didn’t know they needed me, and I didn’t know I needed them. We always learn things too late. Libby needs her husband, and I need my wife. At least she won’t experience the dread of knowing certain death is flying towards her.
The tray is still in my hands, the drones are maybe two minutes away now, the kids still unaware. Tears blurring my vision I turn to the three kids. “Who wants tea?”
by submission | Mar 13, 2025 | Story |
Author: Soramimi Hanarejima
On my way home, I stop by the drugstore for a quick errand. But in the nootropics aisle, I’m thwarted by vacant shelf space. When I ask a clerk what happened to all the memorysyn, he tells me there’s been a recall. Some production issue has made recent lots more potent than normal, resulting in memories that are too vivid with all the minutiae of daily life. For now, we’ll have to make memories the old fashioned way.
After dinner, I cozy up on the sofa and go through what happened today, picking out events that hold the promise of meaning. Then it’s time to determine that meaning, which is easy when the meaning is straightforward but frustrating when it’s ambiguous.
And it’s especially ambiguous for the most notable thing today: the world seeming forlorn without my colors. What does that mean? Hoping to puzzle out the answer, I go over and over my in-progress memory of this colorless day.
Before work, I took my colors to the vision shop for an overdue tune-up. The chromatician told me that all my colors needed recalibration and I’d have to leave them for various specialists to service.
“The whole spectrum is out of whack. Especially the tertiaries,” she said.
“So do you have loaner colors I can use in the meantime?” I asked.
“Not an entire spectrum. We just have basic colors, and you’re better off seeing the world in shades of gray instead of getting pops of red, purple and yellow.”
So I resigned myself to total grayness and headed to the office, the city like the milieu of an old movie—until an unsettling emptiness began to loom over downtown. That emptiness only intensified, and at work, I struggled to focus. By lunchtime, it was as though a vast void lay beneath the floor and behind the walls. I had to take the afternoon off.
My usual route home was a dismal trek through a desolate husk of urban life—buildings, traffic and people all hollowed of substance. My apartment was just as vacuous, sapped of its usual homeyness, like a three-dimensional shadow of the place I’d left this morning. Not sure what else to do, I took a nap and slept soundly, until I was woken by a call telling me that my colors were ready.
After a bus ride through the ashen shell of the city’s former self, I got my recalibrated colors reinstalled, and instantly the world was more lively than ever.
It’s all straightforward enough. So what’s the significance? Colors make the world feel substantive? Is it that simple? Or does the absence of color make an emotion I don’t ordinarily feel—like loneliness—part of the world around me?
More than ever now I crave the automatic narrative cohesion granted by memorysyn—the seamless way this neuroceutical instantaneously makes a whole memory complete with an inscrutable logic that locks events into meaningful place. But I should save what few pills I have in case it’s a while before the manufacturing issue gets resolved.
So I settle for the facile interpretation that seemingly simple fixtures in life shouldn’t be taken for granted. It’s a trite truism, but I can try again later. Or ask for your take on my day without colors. You have a knack for seeing the events of my life in a certain way, and that might just be the key to unlocking the significance I can’t. Then this memory would be really made the old fashioned way, something socially constructed. Maybe with the old-timey pleasure of understanding life together.
