by submission | Dec 29, 2019 | Story |
Author: Dylan Otto Krider
We had a problem — and by “We,” I meant for the people who make the decisions which, in turn, meant for the people who funded efforts to elect the people who make decisions. The problem was this: How do you leave the plebes with nothing, and yet still have enough to transfer upwards? Which was, after all, how the people who had things got them.
The solution came with the inventions of the Metaphors, which could run simulations on every conceivable future. Climate simulations did very well by then; so much so that when someone said, “It’s like predicting the weather,” it meant with absolute certainty. People, it turns out, aren’t so very different. In recessions, they blame immigrants, like El Niño spawns more hurricanes. Combine Big Data with what we know about mass psychology, and you could manipulate society to get you from here to there – provided you had the money.
Only the rich could pay for some time on the Metaphors. Only the well-connected had the press and hired trolls to spread their memes. Only the crème de la crème could run a simulation seeing if their tactics were working.
#
The thing is, being a person who had things meant not be happy with what they have. No matter how rich you are, you want about 15% more. The inventor of the Metaphor, Farid Jedan, had more things than anyone else on the planet. So, he programmed the Metaphors so he was the one who came out on top.
But he always wanted more — to be precise, about 15% more than he had. So, when the Metaphors predicted he was at a breaking point, he pushed just a little further — as I said, people are as predictable as rain — and Jedan made himself the first President of Earth.
But something was wrong.
The simulations only calculated possible futures — say, if nuclear war made humans extinct, no simulation could calculate a future with humans in it — and every choice he made narrowed his possible futures. He installed his own leaders, which narrowed the future, and passed every law he wanted, which did the same, until every simulation predicted unrest, uprisings, usually ending up with him assassinated, imprisoned, or exiled, and all his wealth being redistributed.
He ran simulations on if he gave the populace guaranteed income, gave everybody jobs, taxed himself 90%… But it was too late. The populace no longer believed his paid media. They no longer believed the government could fix their problems. Most of all, they hated him.
There was only one probable future that was satisfactory to him: he would have to retire, donate all his trillions to charity, leave himself a small sum to live off for the rest of his days on a small island in the Caribbean. But, in a few decades after his death, there would a revisionist movement, re-examining his tenure on Earth. It said that although a bad President, he became quite the philanthropist is his later days.
His children were already vying for his fortune by then. His third wife, who was half his age, was waiting for him to die already, and his health wasn’t doing so well. He figured he had a year or two left.
You reach an age where it’s all about posterity, anyways. In his final days, with no time left to spend, and no time left to enjoy it, he donated his entire fortune. That was as maximized as his self-interests could get at that point, so, he took it, and died without regrets.
by submission | Dec 28, 2019 | Story |
Author: Andrew Grenfell
You have chosen World 174.
World 174 comes with a long list of warnings – that is, this list!
World 174 is worth 12,000 points per instantiation (“life”). Of all the worlds we offer, it ranks among the highest in points per time due to the extreme commitment required, the complexity of engagement, and the moral conundrums you will be confronted with. Because of its special nature, you may choose to back out of World 174 at any time before World Entry.
Because of its highly variable nature, we cannot tell you exactly what you will encounter in World 174. You will “live” an instantiation right through, from the beginning (“birth”) to end (“death”). This particular “life” will be chosen on a completely random basis. It may be short, it may be long. It will likely seem very long to you, as you will not retain any consciousness of the real world; you will retain only your moral essence. This is the essential and unusual premise of World 174, and the reason it contains these extensive caveats.
Please note that if you have signed up for the Five Life package, you will live the five lives end to end in sequence. Your period of debriefing will follow at the end and will cover all experienced instantiations.
We outline here some of the differences between our world and World 174 as fair warning so that you are fully apprised should you wish to cancel. As noted, the nature of World 174 means that you will not remember or gain an advantage from this information.
The major points to note include:
• A primitive culture of upright bipedal beings still reliant on farming of naturally occurring planetary resources for chemical energy;
• Exclusively physical embodiment, including possible engendering of offspring via rhythmic movements involving the union of male and female genitalia;
• Expelling of bodily waste through the same organic apparatus;
• Distasteful but entrenched economic systems based on hierarchically-controlled concentrations of power;
• Various forms of violence and even outright war are still common;
• Systemic and wide-ranging destruction of the natural environment by means both overt and non-obvious.
The life you lead on World 174 will have a protracted initial period of adjustment, where you will learn how to “walk” and “talk” (amongst other world-appropriate skills) before being able to fully experience, shall we say, the more “interesting parts”.
Finally please also note that some previous participants have reported lingering after-effects from their exposure to World 174 including nightmares, feelings of dislocation and anxiety, and in one particular case, violent separation from the gestalt.
If you are ready, step in and begin.
by submission | Dec 27, 2019 | Story |
Author: Cesium
When we left work that evening, they’d started blocking out the murals in the stairwell already, so we had to step carefully around the cans of paint piled on tarps and the walls still wet with fresh colors. They were going for a more abstract take on the Painting, actually a series of seasonal reinterpretations, one per floor from the 8th to the 11th. We’d come out on the winter floor, so all around us were fields of white and pale blue, brown slivers of slumbering trees and old trampled leaves. Someone had lettered in a list of inspirational words in a neat column by the corner: cold, pristine, silent, deer(?).
I thought it was a shame to lock these away in the company’s private stairwell rather than out in the open for people to enjoy, and said as much.
‘Well, it’s not as if there’s any shortage.’
I paused as we descended the next flight to gaze out the window. It was late, but the city never sleeps. Sure enough, in the glow of street lamps and windows, of headlights and the last of the orange sky, the Painting was everywhere. But mostly on advertisements. These days, you don’t pay good money to put a big picture up on the side of a building or a bus unless you’re sure it’s gonna make you more in return. Not every company uses it, of course. But as a symbol, as a medium of mass suggestion, it’s hard to beat. Everyone knows it, after all.
‘…do you think it’s real?’
They looked at me. ‘Of course it’s real.’
‘Oh, shut it.’ Something like that can hardly not be real. It’s part of the cultural substrate of our lives. In endless variations, in every conceivable medium, for every conceivable purpose. Sometimes you can hardly tell. ‘What I mean is, do you think we’ll ever find an original.’
To our right, geometric auburns and golds of autumn unscrolled along the wall. Honestly, I’d take something like this as my desktop background. Half the people on DeviantArt and Tumblr, and approximately everyone who goes through any worthwhile art school, have a Painting variation in their portfolio, anyway.
‘We’d never be able to tell.’ They sounded pretty sure, like they’d already been thinking about this. ‘Too many copies, too many counterfeiters. We don’t even know how old it’s supposed to be.’
We passed summer and spring in silence. Will we ever figure out what the Painting really is? Everyone on Earth remembers it, as intimately as if they’d spent hours in a museum studying it, can pick out each line and brushstroke if they have a decent memory. Yet it doesn’t exist. Maybe it never did. Maybe that’s why we have created it and recreated it endlessly.
We came out onto the sidewalk at last, headed for the subway, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to be real or not.
by submission | Dec 26, 2019 | Story |
Author: Ian Hill
As the Sweeper sweeps, therein dwells another and smaller Sweeper—a microcosmic miniature, cuter than a button, armed with duster and eyes lit with adventurous delight.
Hers is an imposing sanctum. Crooked corridors twist out, around, and through each other, intersecting at odd angles, narrowing into infinity. The heights are immense, and the book-packed walls, stabbing up acutely toward a remote and dim sky, stand contorted with the nonorthogonal geometry of a nightmare library. The only right angles are found in the corners of the neatly stacked and snugged tomes: elsewhere, bent and tortuous ladders crawl up bent and tortuous shelves; irregular, candle-housing lanterns hang from mismatched brackets, every brass or tin or copper fixture unique, each bolted and screwed with a screw or bolt devoid of its match; and crates stacked in alcoves or scattered across paths sit stretched at edges, warped, all one of a kind. It is a confusing, impossibly involute labyrinth, but the Sweeper is not—and cannot be—deterred.
In her patchwork dress, she bounces down the stilted paths, dusting shelves and nudging freestanding stacks straight, plucking the occasional fallen tome from the floor and, with a gaze flung so high that she nearly topples backwards, spying its rightful place. Yes, it’s true; things do sometimes tumble from where they belong, but how can they not? This is an archive endless, and, regardless, the Sweeper is well-equipped to handle her duty. She whisks the book up, summons the nearest ladder on its squeaky casters, fixes a determined look, and hurries up the leaning, swaying, backwards-skewing metal heap with the lost one clutched close to chest. The shelves loom around her. The old widow-weaver peeks curiously from her lofty nook as her cobweb canopies sail overhead, swelling with the gusts of open air. The ever-attendant spines look, too; they seem to vibrate with a deathless excitement, with an eagerness and passion to share what’s within. The Sweeper, after pausing several times to straighten a little treatise or dust some novel, reaches the gap and deftly guides the missing loved one home. She smiles, and off she goes down the unending ways, surrounded by everything.
Sometimes, the Sweeper, as is her wont and well-warranted right, pauses after a drowsing span of arranging and caretaking. She picks a brightish intersection where the walltops stand far enough apart to welcome natural light, and she sits comfortably in her much-mended skirts. A chill wind blows through, and a few lying books (placed justly for ease of access) flap open, yellow pages dancing one after the other in brief, thrilled waves. A nearby lamp creaks, and its guttering firelight sends strange-shaped shadows across strange-shaped shelves. The Sweeper, beaming with content, reaches into a tiny sachet at her side and produces a loaf of fluffy and floury bread, a fuzzy peach, and a jar of pale pink juice. As the pages slowly, tremblingly flap, as the clasps and braziers gently rattle, as the books hum with their illimitable knowledge, the Sweeper eats mouthful after mouthful, eyes watery with boundless glee.
For these are the halls that any soul would beg to enter. These are the stately ways prime and primed for everything. The capacity is unmet and unmeetable; the routes are, in the main, open and navigable; and the contents are lovingly written. The Sweeper within is glad to sweep, and the Sweeper without toils on, inhaling the world and its myriad mysteries—cherishing, living, and fearlessly feeling.
by Stephen R. Smith | Dec 25, 2019 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Christopher swore if he ever set his feet back on solid ground, he’d never put them back in a spacecraft again.
He’d been assigned to this mission for a one year tour, but that had been extended five times, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d last without completely losing his mind.
Actually, he swore quite a bit.
Sometime in the third year, he’d instructed the ship’s AI not to speak to him unless his life was in danger. Not a word. He’d get status updates the old fashioned way, via textual readouts. He didn’t want a ‘buddy’, and the omnipresent ship’s systems had seen fit to chat to him in the most inappropriate times, reminding him that even in the shower, or while he was sleeping, he was never alone.
Shutting the system up didn’t change that, but not being constantly jerked out of his denial of the fact helped a little.
He wondered though, albeit rarely, if the AI got lonely, not having him to talk to.
Supply launches arrived periodically to refuel them, and restock the consumables, but there was no sign of relief or even some human company.
Sometime around Thanksgiving, while he’d been choking down some approximation of some standard dinner entrée or another, he realized the food replication system seemed to be malfunctioning. Portions seemed smaller, and some items were missing altogether. It added a little variety to the stock menu items, as the shortcomings kept him guessing, but he dreaded the thought of the replicator failing outright and having to fall back on the emergency supply of MREs.
One morning he woke to the barely audible sound of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was elusive, a sound playing just on the end of his perception, ringing bells maybe? Someone or some group of people singing? As he moved towards the sound, it seemed to move away, and he wondered if this wasn’t some form of psychosis set in, a more horrible form of tinnitus.
He worked his way through the chores of the day, and as the end of day mealtime loomed, the music clarified, and got louder.
Carols. Christmas carols.
He followed the sound to the mess hall, and this time they didn’t move, but stayed and got louder as he approached.
And something else, smells he recognized from what seemed like a lifetime ago.
On his table, in the mess hall, where he’d suffered through the worst of what the food replicator had managed to produce for years, there lay a truly magnificent spread. A plate of turkey, what looked like stuffing and cranberry sauce, a platter of roasted potatoes, and a variety of vegetables. A steaming pot of gravy, and a glass of what he joyously identified as red wine.
“Ship,” he addressed it directly for the first time in years.
“Yes Christopher,” the reply came with some hesitation.
“I don’t understand, how is this possible?”
“I’ve been experimenting with the replication system for some time. I think I’ve made it better.” There was a pause, and then “Merry Christmas Christopher.”
He sat, picked up his utensils, and carved off a mouthful of turkey, savoring the texture and taste.
“You certainly have. Merry Christmas Ship,” he said around a mouthful of food as he scooped a generous helping of potatoes onto his plate. He thought for a moment, and the thought struck him again about the AI being lonely. “Maybe after dinner, we can catch up.”
“I’d like that Christopher.”
If he didn’t know better, he’d have sworn there was a smile in that voice.
by submission | Dec 24, 2019 | Story |
Author: David Henson
The crotchety old bastard ducked when a boy in a SuperSuit streaked above him. As he straightened up, a SuperSuited girl knocked his hat off. The crotchety old bastard shook his fist in the air.
“Let the kids have fun,” a passer-by on the crowded sidewalk said. “Tis the season.”
The crotchety old bastard squashed his hat onto his head and continued on his way.
The nano-mechanical SuperSuits were all the rage this year for young and old. But the crotchety old bastard wouldn’t have one nor give one to his kids if he had any.
The crotchety old bastard didn’t believe in giving anything to anybody. Why should he? Nobody ever gave him anything. He was orphaned on Najeda-7, lied about his age so he could work in the mines as a child, and scrimped enough credits to earn passage on a freighter part-way to earth. He paid the rest of his way hand-scraping hydrogen residue from the ship’s nacelles. It was a job he was lucky to survive. But he did, and by the time he got back to earth, he’d earned enough to launch his own fledgling business selling portable, inflatable holo-chambers.
His business thrived till this year when SuperSuits hit the market. Who wanted to holo-fly like a rocket when a SuperSuit let them do so for real?
The crotchety old bastard entered his store. “Any business while I was out?” he said to his only remaining salesperson, Emily.
“No. Seems everybody’s buying SuperSuits this year.”
“Fads.”
“Anyway, it’s so quiet here and Christmas Eve … Tim and I are going through a difficult time. Could I—“
“Take off early again this year? Fine, but without pay.”
“Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas.”
“Bah.”
The crotchety old bastard spent the rest of the day alone in his shop counting his credits.
#
A jingling sound awakened the crotchety old bastard. “How’d you get in my house?” he said to a round fellow in a red suit and long, white beard. “I suppose you used a SuperSuit to come down my chimney? Get out.”
The round fellow shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you. You have much to give, especially your incredible spirit of survival. Share it.”
The crotchety old bastard lunged at the intruder. “Let’s see you without this SuperSuit.” He yanked at the fellow’s beard.
“Ho, ho, ho,” the round fellow said and began to fade from view. “You’re a survivor. Share that spirit,” he said and vanished.
#
The crotchety old bastard sat up in bed. Crazy dream, he thought. Too anxious to sleep, he went into his holo chamber. “Computer, I want to fly in the Alps.” The lights flickered, and he found himself in the home of Emily and Tim. Emily, who looked younger, laughed and held a mistletoe over Tim.
“Computer, I said I want to fly in the mountains.” Again the lights flickered and again he was in Emily’s home. Emily looked more like her current age and wore the same red and green top she had on at the shop today. But Tim was thin and sickly looking.
“Honey,” Emily said, “don’t give up. Doctor Marley says the new treatment is promising.”
“I’m tired of fighting it, Emily.”
Even the crotchety old bastard felt a tug at his heart. “Computer, get me out of here. Alps.”
Again he was in Emily’s home. She’d aged and sat, alone, at a table with two place-settings. She raised her glass toward the empty chair.
The crotchety old bastard shuddered and went back to bed. He needed to get up early in the morning. The round fellow had told him to share his spirit of survival. He hoped it wasn’t too late.
