by submission | Jan 6, 2019 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Any chance I can talk you out of it?”
“Nope.” Dan glanced at a small three by five card he was holding in his palm. Michael raised an eyebrow and pointed to the card with a quizzical look on his face. Dan smiled. “It’s just a motivational phrase I wrote down. “ Dan slid the card across the table.
“Not my feelings.” Michael frowned. “Then who’s feelings are they, Dan?”
“Not sure exactly. I’d tell you they are the nanites’ feelings but that wouldn’t be accurate.”
“You know that makes you sound crazy.”
“I’m aware of that Mike, but as you can see by my med file, I’m as sane as you. So why after only three months of mourning the death of a woman I have spent more than seventy-seven years with, I feel perfectly fine. Not even a little sad or depressed. Just fine.”
“You’ve probably just dealt with it better than you thought you would.”
“I did consider that. In fact, before I knew it, I was beyond considering it and shifted into ‘count your blessings’ mode. You know, like some damn government nanite commercial…I’m one hundred and eight with my own body reconditioned and maintained so I have the look and health of a twenty-two-year-old. I’d like to point out that at age twenty-two in 1984, I was forty pounds overweight and even before I put on the weight, I never had the gymnast’s body I do now.”
“Nanites. What a blessing.”
“Now you sound like the commercial. It’s all too pat. When I think about it there is no pain or struggle in my life anymore. Damn nanites won’t let it happen.”
“Now you’re sounding paranoid.”
“Really Mike? You’ve known me all this time and have I ever sounded paranoid?” Dan looked at his card again and put it back in his pocket. “What got me on this track was when I was in midst of counting my blessings, I tried to remember the actual pain I had when my Dad died way back in the eighties. I couldn’t. Even now I’m trying my hardest to get angry and I just can’t.”
“Sounds like its nothing more than emotional maturity.”
“If I did the work to get there, it would be. Instead, the damn nanites just flood me with sunshine juice or whatever chemical they decide to use to ‘correct my imbalance’ and I’m better.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Where does it stop? If I get a bad feeling about the news, or I just don’t like what the government wants me to like? No. I don’t know who is programming the nanites to do what. So, out with them all so I can live my own life.” Dan stood up and slid the waiver across the desk. Michael looked at his friend and wanted to respect his wishes but a tiny little feeling in the back of his mind made him feel otherwise. Instead, he wrote “denied” and slid the form back to Dan.
Dan smiled sadly and shook his head. “I expected this to happen. You can’t help it either. Still, I can’t make heads or tells of why I feel good right now.” Dan laughed like he just remembered a private joke and walked away.
Michael frowned. He was concerned for his friend and thought he was quite sane, rational even. Maybe, he should allow the nanite removal procedure to happen. But then the fresh flood of endorphins coursed through his brain and distracted him just enough not to give it a second thought.
by submission | Jan 4, 2019 | Story |
Author : Philip Berry
Jake, aged nine, was found with his hands deep in the inverted workings of a 3rd generation litter picker, behind a mineral refinery by outer orbital. He was a mile from home, and it was an hour before bed time. The ten-legged picker had been tipped onto its weathered, bronze carapace. Its long legs twitched with each application of the circuit tester. ‘Borrowed’ from an electrician’s toolbox, it emitted a small charge whenever Jake pressed a button on its yellow plastic handle.
The flickering, elongated shadows of the legs on the refinery’s concrete wall caught a security guard’s attention. The muted chirrup of the picker’s balance alarm confirmed that something was seriously wrong. So he called it in, and five minutes later a three-man police squad spilled from the ramp of a dust-roiling craft. Jake had no idea what was going on. The Tasers levelled at his narrow chest were not required.
His mother, Dorothy, stared through a two-way mirror. Jake sat on the other side, scared and very still. Detective Desolt, standing by Dorothy’s shoulder, whispered,
“He seems to have no understanding. Does he go to school?”
“Yes. He never misses a day.”
“Haven’t they taught him RAM principles?”
“I don’t know. We only arrived three months ago. There was no RAM law in Washington state.”
“Well, we are more progressive here. Hopefully his… ignorance… will sway the judge.”
“What could happen?”
“Maximum five months residential education.”
Dorothy sobbed. “He won’t cope with that. He won’t.”
“Follow me. Let’s see if we can’t teach him some awareness before the hearing.”
Jake smiled when Dorothy entered, but as he stood to hug her a female officer restrained him.
“Jake. I’m Detective Desolt. Tell me… do you know what torture is?”
“Causing pain… to make people say things, or do things.”
“And what were you trying to make the litter-picker do?”
“Nothing… I just wanted to know how it…”
“Jake, do you know what pain is?”
“Something that hurts?”
“That’s a tautology.”
Jake’s looked totally bewildered. “I… I don’t know.”
“Pain, Jake, is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with material injury.”
“To flesh and bone, Detective!” interrupted Dorothy.
“To all autonomous materials.”
“But the picker felt no pain. This is stupid!”
“The description I received was clear. Its legs were flailing, an alarm was sounding… which your son had attempted to muffle, and three of its bulbs were flashing. Those are all manifestations of distress.”
“Detective. They are… malfunctions…”
“Indeed!”
“No… they are reflexes. It didn’t feel anything. It didn’t suffer.”
Desolt sat on a chair next to Jake and took his hand. He then pinched the skin on the back of the boy’s hand. Jake yelped and pulled his arm away. His legs flexed at the knees.
“We do this in the classroom… in 3rd grade actually, Jake will have missed it. The reaction is typical. The same reaction we see in our mechanicals.”
Dorothy was caught between panic and anger.
“This is absurd! The whole thing is absurd! He was just experimenting! He wants to be an engineer.”
“He has broken the law. You’re not helping him.”
Jake hung his head. Dorothy raised an arm and slapped Desolt across the cheek. His head rotated by ten degrees. His cheek did not flush. Dorothy looked into his eyes and caught a metallic glint at retinal depth. Desolt stood, smiled and made his way to the door. With his finger over the lock-pad he turned and said,
“I can assure you madam, that hurt. A lot.”
by Stephen R. Smith | Jan 3, 2019 | Story |
Author: Steve Smith, Staff Writer
Jodi pushed open Jane’s door, knocking while it was already swinging inwards and waited until it had closed behind her before speaking.
“Next Tuesday at quarter past noon he’ll have stopped Bob McKibbon’s heart.” The announcement was followed by a left-handed flick of fingers down her right forearm towards Jane’s desktop, the bits of data that comprised the intel briefing making the leap across the office to the mid-air display where it hovered for review.
“Christ, that’s the third one of these this quarter,” Jane scanned the document top to bottom, making notes in an action plan as she went. “We’re going to have to go back a few years on this one too, increase junk food intake, sugar, closet alcohol consumption, we can’t bend the timeline in any way that will require affecting anyone else’s,” She pushed back from the desk, turning her attention to Jodi, “do you have any idea how much of a pain in the ass this guy’s becoming?”
“As long as he’s in the pole position, we retroactively justify his futures. That’s the gig, nobody said it was going to be easy.” Jodi softened. “Look, I know it’s a shitshow, but you’re the best at this, if anyone can restring his timelines so he doesn’t destroy himself and the party, you can.”
Jane pulled up a list of pending events, spinning the display around so Jodi could see.
“It was bad enough when he was firing intelligence staff,” she started, “re-engineering the history of spooks who are trained to recognize when their timelines have been distorted was an invitation for disaster, but that just needed to hold up to administrative review. Retroactively creating health conditions to cover deaths, that has to stand up to coroner scrutiny, and that’s an entirely different level of sophistication and detail.”
Jodi surveyed the office, noted the absence of anywhere to sit and so stood shifting her weight from foot to foot as she replied.
“This can’t go on forever, you know that. His term will expire, the mantle will be passed to someone else, hopefully, someone who isn’t just another petulant child, and we’ll get back to reworking foreign governments, and de-escalating conflicts in far-off countries, just like the good old days.” She smiled, not entirely confident he wouldn’t somehow secure another term before common sense and decency made an inevitable return to the administration.
An urgent action item popped to the top of the list on Jane’s display, and both women studied it in stunned silence.
“He can’t really think he can push this through,” Jane’s voice was clearly strained, “aren’t there safeguards on rewriting electorate laws? He can’t honestly think we can just eliminate the term limit without anyone noticing.”
Jodi stood silently for a long time before leaning close and whispering in Jane’s ear.
“You should go back a few years and increase his junk food intake, and sugar, he doesn’t drink publicly, so you’ll have to make him drink in private, excessively, maybe late at night. Nobody will notice if he’s drunk then, he doesn’t make much sense at the best of times.”
She straightened, fixed her suit jacket and read Jane’s face as the realization of what she was suggesting swept over her.
“If you prioritize this, you can save McKibbon’s life while you’re at it.” She smiled again, a genuine expression this time. “There’s already a death event on the timeline for next Tuesday at quarter past noon, maybe it’s time we reallocated that.”
Jane’s mouth tightened into a line. She held eye contact for a long minute, then nodded once and turned the display back and started working.
If she was successful, McKibbon might be just one of the millions of lives she’d save this week.
by submission | Jan 2, 2019 | Story |
Author: Sam Davis
The wind swept down the valley, once dotted with trees but now covered in soot and ash, and rolled through the trench causing Elijah to pull his coat tighter around him. It didn’t help much, it really never did when winter set into southern Kansas. It was barely dusk and already the freshly churned soil next to the trench already had a light crystallized dusting accumulating atop it. There was a crisp crunch as familiar footsteps approached behind Elijah.
“Smoke, comrade?” Alexa proffered an open pouch of rolling tobacco. The pouch was nearly empty and the papers had long since disappeared, though that didn’t matter much as most of the troop preferred the dried corn husks Alexa had scrounged up as an alternative.
“God yes!” Elijah’s teeth chattered together as he spoke, giving each word a staccato clatter that was eerily reminiscent of ‘them’. As if they weren’t cold enough already, everyone froze. “Sorry, sorry, it’s just so damn cold” Elijah laughed nervously “I’m obviously not one of ‘them’ guys, don’t be crazy.”
“Ah hell, who knows,” Sasha said stirring the pot of gruel over the small fire. “Maybe the robots are our friends” With the absurdity of that statement the tension amongst the group broke. Alexa shook her head, Grigory who was ever quiet even broke a grin, and Elijah’s shoulders sagged with obvious relief. There were rumors that ‘they’ had a new model, one that looked like people, flesh and blood. Of course, that was pretty common scuttlebutt. Every few months Intelligence would send out something official that would explain how that is perfectly impossible.
“Ahck! We will kill them all. Not one of their steely hearted chassis shall survive!” Anichka spat which somehow did not disturb the smooth femininity in her voice. There were general murmurs of agreement but everyone was too cold to do much more.
Sasha rummaged in her pack and paused for just a moment before pulling out a can of beans. “I had been saving this for a special occasion but what is more special than another night on this godforsaken tundra, eh?” With a practiced flip of her wrist, the can was open and its contents poured into the pot.
A slow hour passed as each of them eagerly waited for their dinner to finally be ready. Soon they were shoveling the best meal they had had in months down their throats. The only sound was the clink of metal on metal as spoons searched the bottoms of bowls for the last morsels.
Elijah sighed happily, closed his eyes, and died. Suddenly three sets of eyes fell upon Sasha, accompanied by three red dots that danced across her chest. Unperturbed she continued cleaning her bowl. “Huh, ya know, I guess Elijah was right, comrades. He really wasn’t one of ‘them’. I did expect there to be a few more though.”
Anichka was the first to speak. “You were right as well. Robots are our friends.”
by Julian Miles | Jan 1, 2019 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The last words my Pa said to me were: “Down where the rocks run free, and the colours run like blood.”
Not the traditional deathbed wisdom for the young buck, but certainly something to stay with one. After seventeen years of prospecting, I still think about it. When Kristin and I transitioned from lust to romance, I knew I’d share the words eventually. That time is tonight, in one of those quiet interludes before dropping off to sleep.
She sits up and replies: “Melting in magma.”
That makes me sit up.
Dondas Kieller, my Pa, had been a crystal hunter, a seeker of the impossible gemstones that can be found in the rubble that drifts through space. His business partner for twenty years, Alois Johnston, had quit barely six months before Dondas found the motherlode.
Not that there was any mining involved. He found an ancient spaceship tethered within an isolated asteroid. How long it had been there was a question with a staggering answer: it had been abandoned before humanity first ventured into space.
The discovery caused a sensation. Johnsten’s attempts to claim some of the bounty likewise. Then the second expedition translated the alien language on the walls and discovered the reason why the ship had been hidden: it was a doomsday device, a planet destroyer, concealed out here in case of dire need, along with all the secrets of its creation.
Secrets that our militaries wanted. Secrets that were missing: data platters and focussing arrays, both made of artificial gemstone, had been recently removed. The military came after Pa, but he didn’t budge. Claimed he’d never explored that far into the vessel. Alois accused him of stealing for profit, but burying after the translations were made public. The media attention didn’t help defuse the situation.
At the height of the outcry, Pa made up with Ma and brought us here, the family lodge on Big Island. It was here that Alois and three like-minded ‘friends’ came visiting one evening a few weeks later. I heard them arrive, then Ma took me with her to overnight with friends.
What happened that night has several versions. The accepted one is that after an argument, Alois departed with his friends. Angry and probably drunk, he lost control of his hired flyer and plunged into the sea. The flyer was recovered, the bodies weren’t.
All Pa told me was that: “Alois knows where the alien gems are.”
I pestered him for months. It came a bit of a thing between us. I’d ask in a variety of ways, he’d always give the same reply. But, as time passed, I got bored with it. I’d still toss the question occasionally, because it made him smile, but the fun was gone.
Until tonight.
At the end of our property, about two kilometres away, is a big lava flow. Kristin’s interpretation has me putting Pa’s last words together with his stock reply.
I whisper: “Alois knows where the alien gems are: down where the rocks run free, and the colours run like blood.”
Looking at her, I smile: “He destroyed the information and core components of the weapon.”
She tilts her head, not understanding.
I look up at the ceiling, eyes watering: “On his deathbed, he confessed to it. By inference, quite likely four murders as well.”
Kristin looks puzzled: “Tell me the story.”
I do.
She sits for a few minutes after I finish, then points at the half-bottle of wine on the table.
“We should drink a toast to him. Then never mention this again.”
I fetch the bottle and two glasses.
by Hari Navarro | Dec 31, 2018 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
“Now I have a little time to think”, she whispers to herself without moving her lips. Nothing new in that.
Her escape pod lays upon a forlorn acid plain. A monotonous mountain-less sweep interrupted by nothing but the cusp edge of newly formed craters and the glowing remains of the ship.
The pod fizzes and pops and its parachute lays limp and listless like yet another discarded prophylactic. Those parting gifts so lovingly cast down upon her cigarette and wine stained carpet. That sodden thing within a room at the end of a filthy ginnel, now on the farthest side of existence.
She thinks of her depression and she wonders just why it is the first thing that flickers in her eyes as her minutes grind and prepare to turn into seconds.
Empathy. How can she possibly even start to pretend she knows how others feel? And how can they know what she is? Those who had opened their hearts to her, the few, they’d tried so hard to equate their losses and the cracks in their lives to those of hers. But into these boxes, she didn’t quite fit.
Love. Such a short and wickedly evasive little meaningless word. Can we still love those who beat us? Can we love those who have drunk from the fountain of our faith and repaid the favour with lies? Of course, we can. Love is love. It is solitary. She truly loves the way that alcohol sears at life’s bitter edge and the way in which Cobain so deliciously played with his words. She loves the fools that drink from her body. Love is real. Loving something wicked, it pulls the fangs from its face.
She’d been told to look at her endless possibilities. To reach into the unknown and not be afraid to latch on to those things that she cannot see. Trust in herself and take a chance. You are perfect in your imperfection, they’d lie.
Reach out and connect with people. Let them in and have them connect with you. Nobody is reaching for her and why in fuck would she want to reach out to others? She loves, but she feels nothing, she sees nothing and she smothers herself in the thick heavy syrup of the dark.
Not all of us have family or people who call themselves friends. How sad they say, for surely she wants for them so, so badly.
As she lays here now with her legs snapped in the wreckage and she looks out into this vicious new world, she smiles. She has found the answer.
“I’ve travelled the world and now many beyond it. I’d predisposed myself to look for the light. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need family. I didn’t need friends. I didn’t need for things to get better. I judged myself by the ‘better’ of others. Life is not set and the light is just a place where all sorts of devils can hop and dance in the sun”, she laughs, and it is not manic nor resided. It is glee.
“My legs are numb and the crack in my view-port is stretching. Bring it on. I cannot wait to see what you have for me next. You, my lovely little personal gloriously crumbling dark adventure. And I will live for as long as I do and I’ll savour every last bit – of you”.
