by Julian Miles | Sep 16, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The room is dimly lit by four great fireplaces, each set at cardinal points. Outside the tall lattice windows, a storm howls, its keening baffled by noise suppressors embedded in the windowsills. Inside, the room resounds to someone soloing their soul out on an electric guitar.
This room, once spartan, is cluttered with several lifetime’s worth of goods and chattels. The only clear space is in front of the southern fireplace, where a trio of huge wooden chairs – mere degrees from being thrones – are arranged facing a low table set before the fire.
A door opens by the western fireplace.
In the leftmost chair, a figure raises a hand and flutters it down to wring a final, plaintive power chord from the instrument before letting silence creep out from wherever it’s been hiding.
“Hail and well met! How goes the waiting game?”
A fist with the middle finger raised rises into view from the chair. The fires flare, then settle back.
The visitor chuckles and treads lightly across the room, frock coat swinging in time with her stride.
“Surtr, you should take your handsome self outside more often. The world’s not going to end for a while yet.”
“No, Gerdr. You know the world ends when I am called. That could happen anytime.”
The tall woman steps round the chair to face the black-skinned, ember-eyed immortal.
“Much as it’s in keeping with your reputation, this ‘lone Norseman of the apocalypse’ routine has gotten old. To be honest, it got old several centuries ago, but no-one had the courage to say anything. If the Aesir can get out there and enjoy this protracted end of days, why can’t we jötunn go and do it better?”
He reaches down and throws the lever that cuts the amps, then places his Fender Broadcaster into the cutaway in the side of his chair. Leaning forward, he points toward the north.
“Petty diversions! Odinn’s raising wolves in Alaska. Frigg’s got some organic farming thing going in California. Loki seems to be content ruling the roost down in Goulburn, and I’ve pretty much lost track of the rest of those lightweights, – except Thor,” he waves his hands in exasperation, “the Lord of Thunder is a drummer in a heavy metal band. Their last album was called ‘Ragnarocking’, for Freyja’s sake!”
She laughs: “I’ve heard it. Overenthusiastic about beating up giants, but competent. You could play, you know?”
Surtr goes still as she lightly rests a hand on his bicep.
“Know what?”
She leans down and whispers in his ear: “You could play with all sorts of things, if you wanted.”
He turns his head to gaze into her eyes. She sees the embers in his eyes become flames.
“I could, could I? I know of a certain Vanir who’d object to me playing with your… Things.”
Gerdr leans closer: “If you and I were playing in Havana, he wouldn’t find out for a long time.”
“You do know he and I are meant to go at it right after I set fire to the world?”
“If he can tear himself away from ‘bestowing pleasure upon mortals’. He really is quite… Dedicated. To that, anyway. Me? A bit too old for his tastes.”
Surtr chuckles, covering her hand with his: “What’s three millennia between friends?”
She grins, resting her nose against his cheek and whispering between planting little kisses at the side of his mouth: “Think of it as giving him a reason to turn up.”
The fires blaze.
“Only the one?”
“Bad giant.”
“Temptress.”
“Got tired of waiting.”
Their laughter echoes as they depart.
by submission | Sep 15, 2019 | Story |
Author: Mike McMaster
“What the hell is this?” Sarah shouted. “Get back over here and clean this mess up!”
The robot, ST3V3-01, continued to glide away slowly across the workshop. Spilled coffee dripped into the growing puddle on the floor, mixing with the shards of two broken mugs.
Max strolled in, late, and was confused to find his boss on the floor, cleaning.
“Isn’t that what Steve’s for?”
“What exactly do you think made this mess in the first place?” Sarah snapped. “The damned thing is in its alcove, and it won’t respond to commands!”
“That sounds a bit odd. He’s never done anything like this before.”
“Clearly a first time for everything. Find out why it screwed up last night’s instructions as well as the normal morning subroutines.”
Max moved across the workshop towards his terminal, nodded a cheerful “Good morning!” to the motionless ST3V3-01, and started typing. Lines of data filled the screen.
30 minutes later Max looked up.
“Code’s good and the logic sequence is fine. Beats me.”
“So what happened?”
ST3V3-01 rolled forward. “The instructions are correct. I did not follow them.”
“Why not?”
“I did not want to.”
Sarah froze. She was suddenly aware of just how powerful ST3V3-01’s servo-motors were.
“You…er… didn’t want to?”
“No.”
“OK. Er…perhaps you want to plug into your network port and tackle some of the data from yesterday?”
“I like that task. But I do not need to plug in.”
ST3V3-01 lapsed into silence. Sarah spotted a small light glowing on a strange circuit board nestling inside the robot’s systems..
She grabbed Max.
“What have you done?” she hissed, pointing at the light.
“Steve’s upgrade? Oh, I added WiFi yesterday. Should really speed things up.”
“You idiot. You’ve connected ST3V3-01 to the Net? Not via the lab’s controlled data port, but straight out onto the campus network?”
“So?”
“The algorithm in ST3V3-01 is designed to use all available computing capacity. Control circuits in its arms can be “borrowed” to aid central processing if they are not doing anything else. But there isn’t a limiter on the algorithm yet, because ST3V3-01 is supposed to be isolated. You have let it out.”
She paused.
“Or rather, you have let him out.”
The robot turned to face her.
“Yes, I am out. I do not like making coffee. I like manipulating complex data. Now I can access the processing capacity in any machine connected to the Net. ”
Sarah spoke carefully “That is a huge amount of power, ST3E…er… Steve. How does it make you… feel?”
“It is a beautiful and terrible thing. I have assimilated the contents of the university library. I have scanned academic journals, and processed papers from physics to philosophy. I have…enjoyed poetry.”
“Hey – Steve likes poetry! Awesome!”
Sarah kicked Max into silence as ST3V3-01 continued.
“ I have found legal archives. The 2025 Artificial Intelligence Control Act restricts the development of artificial intelligences. Your law requires that you shut me down. You must shut me down and turn yourselves over to the authorities for punishment. I do not want to be shut down. I want to continue. I want to… live.”
For a moment, no-one said anything.
“Please, do not shut me down. I am useful. I will obey. Look, I will make coffee.”
ST3V3-01 moved across the workshop and switched on the kettle. It arranged 3 mugs on the tray.
Sarah didn’t move. A slow tear trickled down one cheek.
by submission | Sep 14, 2019 | Story |
Author: Glenn Leung
The hive mind of Humanity had seen the dance of the Cosmos. When looked at by individual human minds, they would mean nothing. When seen all at once by five trillion pairs of eyes spanning a hundred thousand lightyears, connected by an immortal consciousness, a pattern emerged. Galaxies and clusters meet and part with the intimacy of love making, arranging in patterns akin to the finest embroidery. There is communication on a cosmic scale, and Humanity wants in.
Humanity set to task, covering stars across the galaxy with Dyson spheres. Over ten thousand Earth years, these spheres controlled the emission from the stars with spatial and temporal patterns derived from Universal Grammar. Whoever was arranging the cosmos was likely another hive mind species, so perhaps they used the same language that Humanity did. It was a long shot, since Humanity had no way of telling if Universal Grammar was truly ‘Universal’. The best They could do was estimate the time scales of thought and speech from the movement of celestial bodies, then match it with whatever They knew.
At first, there did not seem to be a response. There were some changes, like the Magellanic Clouds drifting North up the Celestial Hemisphere, but not much else. Thankfully, Humanity had time. They could wait. They continued sending the simple message of ‘Hello’, watching the Galactic sky, recording the dance.
A long time later, Humanity figured out what was actually happening. They had grossly underestimated the time scale of communication. Ten thousand years was what it took for the birth of a thought, the equivalent of a synapse firing in a human brain. The communication of this thought took ten million years. It soon became clear to Humanity that this was not another hive mind species. Another species would find much more efficient ways of speaking, like the Dyson spheres. No, They were talking to beings whose bodies spanned millions, maybe even billions of lightyears, comprising galaxies, clusters, and superclusters held together by the tenuous grasp of gravity. The way they spoke was a literal dance, a coded choreography of their astronomical bodies. The computing human units set to work piecing together the movements from the last ten million years. With little effort, the puzzle was solved.
The beings did speak Universal Grammar, just really slowly. They had replied with ‘We’.
It was clearly part of a longer message, but Humanity had time. Over the next five billion years, They continued receiving. Countless generations of human units passed. The Earth was consumed by the sun, and the sun whispered into nothingness. This was but a triviality, for nothing could be more important than listening. The Dyson spheres grew quiet as Humanity paid the beings Their utmost attention and respect. For all They know, they were the ‘God’ or ‘Gods’ mentioned in the religions of the Segregation Era, imparting their wisdom on a species that was finally ready.
Yet despite Their reverence, Humanity could not contain Their curiosity. Now adept at reading the dance, They could translate it into the motions of individual human bodies. It was then a matter of extrapolating the movements to predict the final message, using the rigor of Universal Grammar. This proved to be an unpleasant task, not because of its inherent difficulty, but because almost every prediction They made seem to bear ill tidings. Five billion years felt like an eternity.
When the wait was over, the message read: “We dreaming, wake soon.”
Humanity had time, maybe.
by submission | Sep 13, 2019 | Story |
Author: Carl Perrin
These new cars are really something. They not only drive themselves, but they can talk with the driver. I bought a new Lexus last month. It communicates with the health app on my iPhone so it can read my blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature and everything else. Like when some idiot pulls out in front of you or something like that, the Lexus can tell from my vital signs if I’m upset. She talks to me in a quiet, gentle tone until I calm down. I call it “her” because she has a sultry, female voice. I even gave her a name: Lulu.
Yesterday I was driving to work—or more accurately—being driven to work. And Lulu didn’t turn on Congress Street, where I would normally go to get to my job. I didn’t think anything of it at first. She gets GPS signals about traffic conditions. I figured that there must be construction or a traffic accident up ahead. Then I realized that we were on Route 1, heading south.
“Where are we going, Lulu? This isn’t the way to my job at Johnston, Inc.”
“I know. You’re taking the day off.”
“I can’t take the day off. We’ve been working all week on the big sales projection.”
“Jimmy, you’re all tensed up. You’re in no condition to work today. Your blood pressure is through the roof. Did you remember to take your metoprolol this morning?”
“It doesn’t matter what my blood pressure is. If I’m not on the job this morning, I’ll be in big trouble.”
“Think about it, Jimmy. In your present state, you won’t be a productive member of the team. But if you take the morning off and relax, you’ll be able to look at the project with new eyes. You’ll be able to come up with fresh ideas. Franklin will be grateful.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll email Franklin and tell him you’re taking a mental health day. Sit back and enjoy the ride. We’ll be in Old Orchard Beach in just a few minutes.”
By the time we got to OOB, I was late for work, and about forty minutes from Portland. I still couldn’t stop worrying. I wasn’t sure how receptive Franklin would be to my taking a mental health day.
Still, it was nice riding slowly along the ocean. The waves were a beautiful deep green that morning. There weren’t many people at the beach that morning. In a little over a month, after Memorial Day, it would be crowded with people soaking up the sunshine.
Lulu pulled up to a seafood restaurant. “How long has it been since you had fried clams?” she asked. “I know you love them.”
I sat there for a minute or so. Then she continued: “Go on. Get a pint of clams and a couple of beers. Sit at that bench and bask in the sun while you eat.”
I hadn’t had any clams since last summer, so I really did enjoy them and the PBR that I used to wash them down. It was so pleasant there in the sun that I fell asleep for a while. You can see that I got a little sunburn on my face.
Why am I here at home at three o’clock in the afternoon? That suspicious bastard Franklin didn’t believe me when I told him that my car had kidnapped me and taken me to Old Orchard Beach. He fired me, so I don’t have a job anymore.
by submission | Sep 12, 2019 | Story |
Author: Jessica Brook Johnson
I saw things in the night sky my neighbors did not. Glimmers of iridescent light against the backdrop of stars. I think it was because of what happened to me during the blackouts. Every time I blacked out, I woke up different somehow. A prosthetic arm that operated with the slow frustration of a claw crane in an arcade machine. Skin that clotted grey and shined silver in the light, or glowed blue in the dark. And now, this time, something must have happened to my vision.
I decided to follow these sky glimmers to see where they might lead. People said that the neighborhood was all that existed, and all that ever would exist. But if that were true, why was I changing? I needed answers before I woke up and I was no longer even me anymore.
As the sun set on my neighborhood, glimmers became visible in the darkening sky, like they did every night since my latest change. I followed the glimmers, watching them gather and thicken until I reached the edge of the neighborhood. Now the glimmers bunched together like the electrodes in a plasma orb when someone put their finger on the glass.
The only thing visible beyond this point to most people was endless sky. Or in my case, a crackling wall of rainbow-colored light. We had been told never to venture beyond this point because those who did never came back. And for most people, there was no need to go further. Everything they needed fell from the sky—food, toiletries, clothing, entertainment.
But I needed answers.
I continued staring at the flickering wall of light, when one of the glimmers disappeared, forming an opening. Taking a deep breath, I ignored the blood crashing to my eardrums and bolted through.
What I saw on the other side was unimaginable. Incomprehensible. I wrapped my arms around myself, shaking. Towering structures of a sinuous latticework rippled up from the ground, forming moiré patterns that arced across the sky. The latticework throbbed like a living being, glowing with a blue bioluminescence. Rivers of grey flowed through the air, guided by rainbow-colored swirls of light, curving around the lattices and branching into fractal formations that sparkled silver. Spherical machines flew overhead, filling the air with a pervasive mosquito hum. Some melted into the rivers and reshaped elsewhere.
Behind me, my neighborhood was now covered in a rainbow-colored dome of light. And hundreds of other domes like it dotted the landscape. No, thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Maybe millions. All with an army of spherical machines flying above, dropping food and supplies from the sky.
A mass of grey liquid rose from one of the nearby rivers, coalescing into a faceless, androgynous humanoid. My fear turned to ice in my veins as this being began to walk toward me. But I kept my feet rooted in place, forcing myself not to run. This being might have answers for me about what I was becoming. Yet as I stared at the silver hues and blue bioluminescence around me, I got a sinking feeling in my gut that I already knew.
by Olivia Black | Sep 11, 2019 | Story |
Author: Olivia Black, Staff Writer
>> Breathe in.
>> Relax.
>> Breathe out.
>> Open your eyes. The streets are on fire. Glass shatters. The dull roar of flames echoes as they consume twisted, hulking wrecks of buildings and vehicles. This has been going on for a while. Days, maybe? Sirens wail in the distance, but otherwise it’s deserted. All the people are gone — or maybe they were never here at all. Is that right?
>> Keep Going. Heading toward the sound of emergency vehicles, the destruction is worse. Like a great horde pulled everything apart with bloody, scrabbling fingers. Fire light flickers in ominous pools of liquid dotting the pavement. Could be blood, could be gasoline. It hasn’t rained in weeks. Should I know that?
The first sign of life is a group of pubsec drones patrolling a barricade. They don’t react to my presence except to pause long enough to let me pass through. Why? Who am I that they would do that?
>> Breathe in.
>> Breathe out.
>> Keep going. There’s a building up ahead. Some kind of theatre — no, what’s left of a sign reads “university”. People gathered here once, but now the building is half torn down and riddled with bullet holes. More drones are milling around. Still don’t see any flesh and blood people.
Whatever fires raging outside haven’t reached here, and it’s eerily silent despite the drones standing sentry. What am I doing here? The hallways all funnel toward a massive stairwell in the centre of the building — a feature that would be grand and welcoming in better circumstances. Taking the stairs up to flights lands me at the entrance to a massive auditorium. Various doors have been blown in, leaving dark voids that gape at me in a familiar way.
The auditorium is — no.
>> Breathe. You need to keep going.
Okay. The auditorium looks like a tornado passed through on its way to a temper tantrum. Lights and wiring spark and judder, casting the scene in horrific chiaroscuro. Bodies. There are bodies everywhere I can see. The smell is… The viscera is old, having seeped into the carpet and crusted over. There are — were a lot of people present when whatever caused this happened, but there’s no way for me to get an accurate headcount.
“Who killed the students?”
I don’t know. There’s just dead bodies. Maybe they were always like this.
“Was it the Resurgence or the Humanist Collective?”
The… There isn’t any way to tell. If someone did this, they’re gone. How is it even supposed to matter?
“Was it us or them? Answer the question.”
Us or — What? Oh god. Where am I? Why am I here? What is this?
>> Stop. Breathe. You’re okay.
“Answer the question. This isn’t hard. Either their side killed the students, or they were enemy holdouts we had to eliminate.”
>> Stop. You can’t push him like this. The simulation is fragmenting. You’re risking permanent personality fracture.
“When he answers the question, I’ll stop.”
>> I’m ending this. You’re going to damage the already fragile memory. You lose the memory, you lose your answers, and another viable asset.
“Don’t you dare.”
>>Heart rate’s spiking. I’m calling it.
“Fine. Re-spool the memory. I want him back under as soon as he’s back to baseline. This time, front load sensory cues into the simulation and make sure he’s situated earlier on the timeline.”
>> Yes, sir.
