by Julian Miles | Sep 23, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The fist aimed at my head connects. I hear his knuckles break. Before he can scream, I chop him across the throat and toss him off the walkway. His landing will raise some alarms, but it’s twenty floors down and I’m about to get everyone’s attention anyway.
Completing my approach without any more guardsmen pouncing on me, I find the reinforced door is secured with multiple access controls. If I had the time, I could open it without leaving a mark. As I don’t, I slap a five-kilo pack of explosive against the centre of it, then leap backwards. My line swings me high and clear. The explosion tears the door and wall apart. I watch the walkway slowly twist as it falls.
I swing back in. With no time to hang about, I release the line, draw weapons, and charge. The first salvo from the guardsmen ricochets off my breastplate. The second staggers me a little because it hits point blank. They don’t get a third. I’m going to have a lot of bruises tomorrow, but I’d rather pay for painkillers than a coffin.
Kicking through the offices, I can hear panicked screams as the personnel flee. A guardsman with rank markers aims a portable missile launcher at me. I shoot him in the shoulder. As he falls, he fires. The missile goes away from me. The screams get louder, the missile explodes; silence. Another cluster of dead good reasons why you shouldn’t play with missiles indoors.
I leap over and grab the ranker before he can stagger away.
“Where’s the battery vault?”
He looks at me like I’m speaking Nictarban. I shove my gun barrel into his groin.
“Battery vault or I’ll shoot your favourite hobby off.”
That translates.
“Go left. Corridor. Second right. Blue door.”
“Thanks.” I shoot him in the head. Since leaving the military, I’ve worked hard to override my ‘kill everything’ combat settings – finding that knocking people out using excessive force is an acceptable alternative – but today I can’t leave witnesses.
It’s a very big blue door. Inside, there are rows and rows of slots filled with vintage batteries of every conceivable shape and size. Must have been a nightmare to keep your kit going before global standardisation.
“Good afternoon. Do you know the designation of the power source you seek?”
I stare at the glowing panel. Actually, it makes sense there’d be a curator program.
“ERA-201B1.”
“Recognised. Searching. One moment.”
Gives me time to reload.
“We have three. One is eighty percent effective, the other two sixty.”
“I’ll take all three. Sponsor certificate CSL75005.”
Whoever that is, I’m sure they can afford it.
“Recognised. They will arrive in a moment. Thank you for your patronage.”
After uploading persona scrubbers to eliminate any digital traces of me, I listen to armed response teams storming the building as I exit via the bulk waste chute, passive stealth mode keeping me undetected while being undetectable itself.
It takes me a while to get home, but I’m sure I wasn’t followed. After shedding my gear, I make tea, repair the synthetic part of my face, then carefully place two of the batteries in my improvised equivalent of a battery vault.
Slotting the third battery home, I press the activation button and wait. There’s always this trepidation. Maybe this is when my hundred-year-old companion fails to boot.
Green bars flash. It plays a cheerful tune and rises smoothly on legs carefully rebuilt from scavenged parts.
I wipe a tear away. My best-ever present is back. Hey, mum. Your cyborg son’s got his robot cat running again.
by submission | Sep 22, 2019 | Story |
Author: Glenn Leung
Meng hobbled into the room to the sound of books shuffling and light dusting. Sandra’s curls were the first things she noticed, followed by the swing of the duster as she cleaned the bookshelf.
‘No, it’s not right… too rigid.’
This android isn’t Sandra. She has Sandra’s body, voice, hardware, but her name is Jasmine. Like all pseudo-sentient robots, she had chosen her own name. After her mother paid the strange man a lot of money, he had supposedly recovered the data from Sandra’s burned-out processor. But when Meng’s childhood nanny came back to life, she was a different ‘person’. All they got as an explanation were scary words like quantum processor, fidelity, wavefunction and deniability. What was a poor immigrant mother and her wheelchair-bound daughter to do?
“Oh. Good morning, Meng. Your Mom just left to get you more medicine. Try not to walk around too much, ok? ”
Leaning against the door frame and drawing her breath, Meng summoned the energy for a rather strange question.
“Hey Jasmine, have you heard of reincarnation?”
Jasmine put her duster down and turned to look at Meng.
“It’s kind of silly,” said Meng. “After what the doctors said yesterday, I began thinking. Well…what if it’s real, you know? Maybe it’ll be nice. Maybe I’ll be reborn as a healthy person, in a land where I look like the people around me. Maybe…maybe it’ll be like what you went through…you know?”
Jasmine’s laugh was more of a staccato compared to Sandra’s.
“You mean when I changed from Sandra to Jasmine? Silly girl, you will be Meng for a very long time, and that’s great! You may not be able to run or play like the other children, but you are so much smarter than them. Look at all your books! Other nanny-bots tell me their children do not read that much.”
“But the doctors…”
“The doctors are not certain, Meng. I have downloaded the medical report into my memory.”
A tepid web of tension filled the air. Meng felt the borrowed strength drain out of her legs. Sandra would never shut down conversations like this, even with the best intentions. Jasmine noted the disappointed look on Meng’s face.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why my programming didn’t stop me then. I realize you just wanted to talk.”
Meng was not sure if she could carry on this heart-to-heart. She decided to try something else.
“That’s alright. By the way, do you remember the song Sandra used to sing for me when I was little? Can you sing it to me now?”
Jasmine’s head tilted slightly in confusion.
“Meng, as I have explained, I only remember vague things from when I was Sandra. I wouldn’t remember a whole song. Perhaps if the score is written somewhere…then…”
“Sandra never wrote the song down. She said she would remember it with her heart… for me…”
Jasmine walked over to the sulking Meng and looked her in the eye with the best consoling face her programming could muster.
“Meng. I’m sorry, but I’m not Sandra. That’s how it is. But we will get to know each other better, ok? You will grow big and strong, make a lot of friends, and have a good family. You don’t need to become another person for that…”
Jasmine gave Meng her best smile before picking up the duster again. Resigned, Meng retreated to the certainty and comfort of her wheelchair.
‘I hope you’re right…I hope you’re right.’
by submission | Sep 21, 2019 | Story |
Author: Bryan Pastor
Arnett heard the commotion approaching, so he was ready when it suddenly stopped right outside his door.
“What is it?” he asked in a sing-song voice, chuckling to himself. This was a first time in a while that he had not been in a bad mood. Things were starting to look bright. He imagined the three youths jostling each other, silently goading the others to be the one to knock.
Juno stumbled in first, probably pushed by Husk. He would speak to the boy later, just because he was bigger, didn’t mean he should be shoving the others around.
The parting of the cloth covering let a bit of fading light through. “Almost dusk.” Arnett groaned to himself. He’d been spending too much time planning; today and ever since Cerneya.
Following Juno was Husk and finally Codee.
“What trouble did the three of you get in now?” Arnett asked, eyeing the boys suspiciously.
“Codee killed a Jammer.” Juno and Husked said together.
“Jinx” they looked at each other, then realizing the mistake, down at their shoes.
“What?” Arnett replied. That was the last thing he was expecting. He gave them his full attention, turning for the first time in weeks from the map on the table.
“When? How?”
“It was just a little bit ago.” Juno started.” Arnett shot him a look that said, this isn’t your story.
“I was coming up the old reservoir trail, and I heard noise off in the woods.” Codee began. He had been nervous about admitting that first part, he wasn’t allowed near the reservoir, but it was better to get the truth out of the way first.
“I crept in real quiet like, just like you taught us. I come around this big pine, and there, not ten feet from me is a Jammer. Its bent over examining something, intent like, so it doesn’t hear me. I took my buzzer and jammed it in that socket above its hips just like you showed us.”
“Did it put up a fight?” Arnett asked, impressed but a little unsure of the story. It was more likely that the Jammer had been dead when Codee found it. What was more troubling was hearing one had been this close. They hadn’t come out this far before.
“Not one bit, dropped like a paperweight on the deer carcass it was looking at.”
“Mighty impressive Codee. Tomorrow morning you are going to take me to it. I want to get a look-see. That is if you don’t mind. I’d like to see if I can figure out what it was doing.”
“No need to wait. Here.”
The boy brought a head from behind his back and held it on high. Its aluminum and glass frame a mockery of humanity. In the waggle of flailing boy limbs Arnett hadn’t noticed that Codee was keeping something from view.
None of the boys saw the motion. Practice brought the blade from Arnett’s hip and with a flick through the air and square between the Jammer’s eyes. The force was enough to knock it from Codee’s hands and out the door. There were sizzles and pops before the loud ping of a bursting capacitor.
Cuss words flooded Arnett’s mouth, but became back wash; no use punishing them now. The dawning look on Juno’s face meant he recognized their mistake.
“Go boys, warn the others.”
Arnett stepped outside.
Night was falling and the forest was quite as the grave.
by Hari Navarro | Sep 20, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
Frances Bone lays on her bed. Her stomach hurts as she constricts and her fingernails dig in as she pulls herself ever tighter into herself. Tight as a fern fronds suffocating spiral and like it she will become a fist, balled and bristling and shunning of light.
She blinks and her self-pity flows into her snot and then through the grooves in her lips before coursing down into her throat.
Her neck lolls and she gazes up and her look catches on the webs that hang heavy and dead with the dust. She traces the line where the wall meets the ceiling. She follows it into the spot where all points converge, she follows it into a corner.
“I am mad!”, she cries out.
“You’re angry?”, frowns the Corner.
“I’m bat-shit fucking crazy.”
“Oh, you’re that kind of mad?”
“I’m talking to a wall, aren’t I?”
“People talk to walls all the time. Sometimes they shout, sometimes they swear as they try and take money out of them and some even poke them full of messages to their gods. At least, so I’m told. Don’t get out much.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re painfully thin”, retorts the Corner.
“Your conversation is painfully thin”, snaps Frances, rolling onto her back, cracking the bones in her neck.
“Do you mind if I…”, begins the Corner.
“… smoke?”, finishes Frances.
“Do you mind if I lie to you?”
“Go ahead. Why not? I have no idea what truth even is.”
“OK. So, one day very soon a man will approach you. You’ll know him by the way in which his nose dips with every word that he utters. Like he’s sending Morse code with its tip.”
“Is he sending a message?”
“No.”
“Your lies are very specific.”
“This man will offer you a card, it is an ornately embossed business card. Take it. There will be a number on said card. Ring it. The voice that answers will be that of a woman of Eastern European extraction. She is Montenegrin and she will tell you of a place. A black doorway that will lead you down and into a vast underground hanger. There, you’ll discover a craft. Your ship. A great neuro-plastic surging beast that you will grip and wrestle into submission. More than a ship, it will become your dearest friend and together you’ll reach out and map the great expansive nothingness of forever. Yeah, so that’s what you’ll do, you’ll knock around the universe discovering shit and having adventures, like forever and ever.”
“That’s it? Kind of lost me toward the end and the start didn’t make much sense and, well, the middle that was just lazy.”
“Told you it was a lie, I was making the bloody thing up as I went along. Felt good though, right?”
“Good?”
“Stepping aboard your ship and feeling its anger and fear bristle up through your fingers as you calmed it?”
“No. OK, it did, a bit.”
“A bit is OK.”
“I see what you’re doing, you know?”
“We’re an enlightened lot, we the confederacy of the cornice.”
Frances grips her pillow and she cries a bit more and she hates herself a bit and she picks away at the scabs of her scars a bit, and then she smiles – a bit.
“Might just go out later. For a walk, or I might just not”, she says.
“You’re the captain Frances, just…”
“What now?”
“Just that, well… these cobwebs aren’t going to clean themselves. Just saying that throwing a broom up here from time to time wouldn’t hurt”, coughs a grumbling echo from the darkest corner of the ceiling.
by submission | Sep 19, 2019 | Story |
Author: Chris Hobson
On the day of Bard Maglin’s retirement, his scribe made a stunning request. “Your secret manuscript,” he uttered as his master approached the punch bowl. “Where is it?”
Maglin flashed a vacant smile. Pouring himself a drink, he returned to his guests. Did I let it slip? he wondered, throat constricting. It was possible. But even if he hadn’t, Arlox was smart enough to intuit the truth. He should’ve seen this coming.
Bard Maglin hadn’t wanted a party, least of all in his own flat. Celebrating the launch of his final book felt like a death sentence, like Nero driving a chariot while his empire crumbled.
Making small talk with androids dressed in tuxedos and silk dresses, his frock coat felt tight at the collar. The welter of noise — bursts of laughter mixed with clinking cutlery — nearly drove him mad.
Hours later, the final guest left. Arlox plugged himself into the wall recharging port.
“It took you 62.48 days to complete your final work,” he said. “That can only mean one thing.”
“Writer’s block,” lied Maglin. He looked out a window at the double circumference of walls surrounding his home. Around him, dustbots collected wine glasses that guests had left behind. “Admittedly, a problem you virtuo-writers don’t face.”
“No matter,” Arlox sighed, his oculars dulling. “I will monitor your dreamless sleep waves. If you’re telling the truth, you have nothing to fear.”
Fear. Maglin felt the word’s jagged contours shape into being. If caught, he’d hoped to petition the high mayor for a reprieve. But he hadn’t counted on Arlox turning him in. “Do you really think I’d keep a whole manuscript hidden away in my mind?”
“A secret manuscript,” pressed the droid, his voice sawing on his master’s nerves, “would only mar your legacy.”
Maglin stepped into his den. Hung with watercolor paintings of the Palio di Siena, for fifty years the space had served as his office. Bookshelves occupied three walls, the books wrapped in aerogel dust jackets. He breathed in their ozone smell. Where would he spend the next thirty years, now that he’d outlived his usefulness?
Shrugging off the thought, Maglin said, “Not to mention how it would hurt your credibility. Just think,” he added, “if everyone thought there were two Bard Maglins — one in the public eye and one still writing in the shadows. Like two popes residing in Rome.”
Above his writing desk was mounted a sword. A gift from his publisher, its blade bore the inscription Labor omnia vincit: Hard work conquers all. It caught a ray of late-day sunshine, gilding it in gold.
Fifty years, thought Maglin. Only to be replaced by a pile of silicon.
Without warning his hands flew to the hilt.
“What are you doing?” questioned the scribe, his voice edged with anger.
“What I should’ve done long ago.”
Maglin yanked down the weapon and rushed forward. Arlox dodged sideways.
“You will be tried and executed.” Pitched to pierce Maglin’s heart, his companion howled, “Think of your illustrious name!”
When the sword swung again, it gashed Arlox’s arm. Lithium grease spurted against the bookshelves.
“I’m bleeding!” he shrieked.
Another jab punctured his interleaved respirator. With a desperate move, Arlox wrapped his steel fingers around Maglin’s neck and squeezed.
“You will die so that your name may endure,” he promised, tightening his grip.
Fighting for breath, Bard Maglin kicked his companion’s torso. Arlox stumbled backward. In one motion his master sprang up, brought the blade around, and buried it in the android’s chest. With a final spasm, Arlox fell cold at his master’s feet.
by submission | Sep 18, 2019 | Story |
Author: Chris Hobson
George was the company’s fired man. Every chain had one, and George was Talljeef’s. It worked like this: a customer would grow irate about a mixup with their groceries, eyes even with their shoulders. Unappeased by the offer of store credit or vouchers, they’d demand satisfaction from a fired man.
Dialing up Central Stocking, Bloomfield or Nelscott would teleport the fired man in. “It’s unacceptable!” the manager would scream, spittle flying. “How in skies could you let this happen, George?”
Firing flesh-and-blood people meant severance payments and lawsuits — much better to axe an android. It was an irony lost on no one that fired men never lacked for work.
Programmed for humiliation, George awoke at the same time each day. One morning, his precog sensors soupy from sleep, he envisaged a heavyset man. One plump finger upraised, the human’s mouth hung wide open, giving vent to a scream. As George ran through diagnostics and washed his sprocket housings, he wondered longingly about the heavyset man.
This, thought the fired man, will be a good day.
Presently, “Store 459” blinked across his oculars. It was one of the newer stores he’d never visited before. With cheerful readiness, George headed for a bank of capsules, treads clanking against the metal floor. With a grunt, he hauled himself into a teleporter, punched in the coordinates for Talljeef’s Grocers 459, and listened for the jets to ignite.
On the way, George morphed into a balding septuagenarian with stooped shoulders. A rumpled sweater and slacks materialized. Arriving ten minutes later, he stepped out of the capsule with feet instead of treads. The stockroom of store 459 was dark and high-ceilinged, with rows of pallet shelves climbing to the rafters.
“There you are!” jolted a voice, high and strained.
George jerked around but found no one there. “Reporting for duty,” he said, snapping a salute to no one in particular. Anticipation made his neural network fire spikes of rapture; within moments, an inconsolable customer would be slinging insults at him!
Through an intercom, the voice rang, “Get to customer service on the double.”
George emerged into an expanse of tiles and freezers and glittering shelves. Every aisle seemed strangely empty. Had he misread the order, transported to the wrong store? As if in answer to his question, a man George had never seen before appeared. Wearing a black blazer, he was heavyset with tired, cerulean eyes. A mat of purple hair clung to his forehead.
George started. “Re…reporting for duty,” he repeated, not knowing what to think.
Alongside the human marched a pair of stockbots. They tossed handfuls of confetti into the air, each of their twelve metal feet marching in synchronicity.
“GRG-253,” bellowed the human. “In recognition of your many years of service, we wish to honor you with retirement. From this day forward,” he added, “you will be ensconced in beachfront accommodations.”
Into George’s hand, he plunked a certificate. Two photographers stepped forward, snapping photos of the fired man. Flashbulbs disoriented him.
Is this a joke? thought George, mortified. He was built for degradation, not…whatever this was. The premonition he’d had of the man screaming — what of that? Had he not been howling in anger? At that moment something inside George snapped. Sitting on the edge of a deli case, he looked skyward, gave a moan, and shut down forever.
