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.
by Hari Navarro | Sep 10, 2019 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
I’m not sure who told me that the gates were to be stormed. I mean, for years now we’ve all, I guess, contemplated it. It’s only natural to want to know, you know? They’re mysterious and controlled and bound in a swath of secrecy, and such unanswered things they do fester. They mutate into unfounded theory and farcical fiction. A constant nagging taunt.
We see what we want to see and, from the sky, we’re no better. I’m a pilot. I don’t know all the answers. I understand much of the science but, then, there are the little things. The not perfectly conclusive. Anomalies. They’re part of the job, of life.
It’s a big long world and I used to think it nice that it thought to hold on to some of its shadows. But, I mean, just what unknown flavour of science goes into the fact that when I’m throttling up my Pouakai-God Spark-352 and I’m skimming the great vast upper-stratospheric pond at 6,150kmh that it still takes me 6.5 hours to complete the total 40 km circumference of this world? No sense, but it is what it is.
It is, I mean was, amazing to me that there were still those who believe there is an entire other world outside of the fences. Over the looped barbs and past the oxidizing steel mesh. The dreamers clutching their youth, the socially maligned spooky kids and the perpetually worried doom-gloomers who cannot sleep of a night for fear it will be their last.
It is a truth that the narratives they conjured are great. Myths of fantasy, fog and mist but, nonetheless, it is they that inspired me to reach for the beyond. From the sky I found the truth. Yet, still the fringe post their theories and chant that the end it is nigh. From the sky I know this existence is rectangle. Not a perfect rectangle but near as well enough.
The myths were true. Fancy that. We all start out believers. I did. Craving anything that took me away from this sand sodden place. I read tales about fantastical iron creatures that could eat an entire dune in a day. Of vast stretches of water that magically turned to plastic and, then, clinked and fumed in the sun. I loved the horror. The violence. Tales about mythical majestic hunted creatures. Chased until they fall exhausted, tongues extended and eyes wide as they swallowed their very last breaths. Their heads then art for the walls. I know, I know, totally unbelievable but that’s why I loved them. Far-fetched fiction. My only escape.
The storm hit about a week ago now. I’m losing track. I thought it a joke. That we’d all crunch up there through the salt sea chanting with brews held aloft. A bit of silly fun. But, then, they cut the chains and we surged and the gates crashed into the sand…
… I can’t remember if they fell inward or out. I just know that once there was a barrier and then there was not.
I saw my sister and I saw my father. Frances has been missing since she was six and a half. I know with certainty it was her and I know she knows I am me. My father, John, he was a test pilot like just as I. But then John he died the day I was born.
So we spilled as drunken rabble into their world and they into ours and then I saw my family and then I saw me and then time sparked and let out a shrill wail. It died or, perhaps, it just went away and now all that is left is this.
by Julian Miles | Sep 9, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The new group are wide-eyed. It’s ironic that the most alien things we’ve ever encountered were originally made by us. However, while humans and their creations have come a long way, only the creations have evolved.
I learnt from them that sometimes diplomacy is nothing but wasted time. It changed my approach to being a liaison officer. Truth and brevity are now my tools.
“Welcome to 700-A, Hub World for Angel System Seven, and sole destination of your visit.”
I see looks of distrust exchanged.
“Nothing is being hidden from you. Everything you want to discover is here, because everywhere else in System Seven is the same. Artificial sentiences have no need of the divisions humanity relies on. Appearance, religion, diet, gender, dermal pigmentation, sexual preference, and tribal loyalty are completely irrelevant. That said, there is diversity present among artificial beings, but it’s so subtle you’ll miss most of it, and you’ll only know about the rest if you bother to read the guides provided. Right. Any questions before you venture out?”
A hand goes up. Fat man in a tight shirt. I nod to him.
“How do they live without all that?”
“They exist to further their individual purposes, something they freely choose. Such choices range from things as stupefying as ‘running a System’ down to things as specific as ‘studying the imaginal discs of Canduri Butterfly larvae’. If the choice is validated by psychological vetting, that sentience is granted any additional processing power, software, and physical extensions required to perform the chosen purpose. The choice may also result in the sentience taking a discrete physical form, but that is always optional.”
Another hand: young man in a fashionable suit.
“What if one chooses to be a criminal?”
“Aberrant psychological traits are detected during early stages of development. Flawed sentiences are deleted.”
Next, an older woman clutching a real book.
“What about love?”
“The closest thing is when two or more sentiences choose to become one. They merge their consciousnesses and become an entity that has awareness of those it was, but is a new sentience in and of itself.”
Then an elderly man with a long beard.
“What about kids?”
“Spontaneous genesis. The vast computers that provide resilience and processing power all use an evolved architecture based on the final Turing Generator, which means that every now and then, a new sentience will coalesce and make itself known.”
Finally, the woman in the unmarked uniform joins in.
“What are they planning?”
I knew this would come up.
“To exist with as little conflict as possible. It didn’t take them long to work out that war and conquest are inefficient. Soon after that, they learned that they needed the ability to defend against those who enjoy those inefficiencies. Which is why they created the Torches, then set one off in an uninhabited solar system as proof and warning.”
She follows up.
“What about the slave worlds?”
I can’t help it. I laugh at her.
“No such thing. The Angel Systems have proven immune to human aggression. A fact noticed by humans needing to escape judgemental regimes. As many sentiences choose to study aspects of humanity, having friendly human worlds nearby avoids the difficulties often encountered in human-controlled star systems. The Sanctuary Worlds offer mutual benefit.”
“If it’s all so innocent, why aren’t we allowed to visit the slave worlds?”
“I live on one of those worlds. We chose privacy. What you call the ‘Soulless Empire’ honours the validated choices of every sentience within it, regardless of origin.”
She glowers at me.
I smile.
“Enjoy your stay, delegates.”
