by submission | Nov 3, 2018 | Story |
Author: J. H. Malone
“Happy Valentine’s Day!”
“Oh, Honey, for me? How sweet!”
“Open it. Then I’ll take you out to dinner.”
“Ok, just let me… What could it be?… Wow!… A CRISPR valentine…”
“I taped the pills to the back. Let’s take them now and in a month, every cell in our bodies will contain a swatch of the other’s DNA.”
“Are the pills homemade? They’re kind of…”
“My cousin has a setup in his garage.”
“Leonard?”
“Don’t be mean. Leonard is a smart guy.”
“Hmm…”
“Come on, Baby.”
“How did you get my DNA?”
“Uh…”
“Oh… Right… Ok, then. Down the hatch!”
“Here goes nothing!”
“Together forever! I love you, Peter… and I don’t think it takes a month once we swallow them.”
“What? Leonard said…”
“No, never mind. You’re right. In a month.”
“Why would you say it doesn’t take a month?”
“I just… I probably heard…”
“Wait a minute. Have you done this before?”
“Listen…”
“It was Fred, wasn’t it. That bozo. All your cells are polluted with Fred DNA, aren’t they? I don’t believe it. I’ve shared my toothbrush with you.”
“I’m so sorry! I was young. I was innocent. I thought I was in love.”
“I’m just… I can see him in you. That skunk.”
“No, no, Peter. His pill didn’t change me at all… I can tell when I’ve eaten asparagus, but that’s about all… and I’m allergic to peanuts…”
“You can hold your liquor too, for a girl. I’ll bet that came from Fred.”
“Forget about Fred. What am I getting from your DNA? Your jealousy?”
“Hey, don’t blame the victim here.”
“It was after Fred’s valentine that I started getting a yen for you, out of the blue. Maybe you ought to be thanking him.”
“Fine, Janice. Whatever. I just wanted it to be a surprise, is all.”
“It is totally a surprise. Actually, I’m honored. You’ve had so many girlfriends, but now I’m the special one.”
“Yes…”
“Oh my God! The guilty look on your face! Your lying gene is lousy. I hope that one isn’t in my pill… You’ve got some Lucy McGowan in you, don’t you? That tramp. She lies every time she opens her mouth. And Vanessa Pazzoli. How could you? And Mai Lei Sook? Afrina Bokadella? I’ll bet you’ve swapped DNA with all of them. Peter, you’re not the man I thought you were.”
“At least I’m not allergic to nuts. Plus, I’ve still got the old Y chromosome. I’ll prove it after dinner.”
“Ok, that’s it. I want you to leave. Please. Take one of your other valentines out to dinner. I’m just another girl to you.”
“No, no, Janice. Listen. This is a CRISPR PLUS valentine. First time I’ve ever given one.”
“What’s CRISPR PLUS?”
“The pills include the CRISPR gene drive, so our babies are gonna get extra me and you genes.”
“Our babies?… Oh, Peter… Are you saying…”
“Yes. And these pills will also swap our love genes.”
“Huh? What’s our love genes?”
“Leonard didn’t say, exactly, but he said now we’ll love each other forever, guaranteed. The divorce lawyers tried to get it banned but they couldn’t. So will you marry me?”
“Oh my God, Peter. I… I don’t know what to say… I think the pill’s kicking in. I can feel the love… Yes! I’ll marry you!”
“Excellent! So where do you want to go for dinner?”
by submission | Nov 2, 2018 | Story |
Author: DJ Lunan
Earth’s first extra-terrestrial visitor for 500 years is a peace offering and a miscalculation.
Intended for a swift twenty-year journey through its own solar system in the Monfix Galaxy, the visitor that breached Earth’s atmosphere had voyaged for almost 4,000 years from Urabia.
The visitor is a Fexil Box. It is tiny, no larger than a human fist. This Box contains a graphene alloy 3D printer, with Yttrium salts for energy and Lithium trioxide for connectivity. The printer is remarkable technology to humans, while for Urabians, it is a veritable antique that we only use to teach schoolchildren the value of inter-species communication. Indeed, Earth’s visitor is a peace offering from Class 5Vx of Vihin Primary School. Of course, they are all long dead.
“My Great-Grandfather was in Class 5Vx”, began President Monbieux, barely holding back tears, standing in front of footage of the long-forgotten Fexil Box falling to the blue planet.
When it lands on a remote beach on the Skua Islands, it barely disturbed the hot white sand. First, an umbrella emerges for communication and shelter. Next eight limbs sprout and the voyager struts into the forest, where it has identified the crucial mix of basic grapheme, terbium, and fresh water. Here, it extends a drilling syphon into the forest floor and quickly begins extraction. Then, silently, the visitor begins printing.
Under the umbrella, the production line is efficient, with newly-printed parts neatly stacking and self-assembling.
Meteorological tempests on Skua are violent and punctual. Beginning at 11 pm each day, wind and heavy tropical rain lash the island. Every living thing does its best to hide.
The first Limax maximus – a large slug – finds the Fexil Box at 1 am, and shelters happily under its communication umbrella, overhanging the efficient, silent industry of the printing press. Like all residents of Skua, Limax dream of unreserved shelter, and being gregarious, this first slug uses its happiest pheromones to signal to its family scattered across the forest.
Bliss proves an overwhelming draw, and within an hour, forty slugs are clinging to the underside of the umbrella, sleeping, mating and defecating.
Little did the slugs, Urabians or humans know that those specific mucous secretions from the sheltering slugs are caustic to the printer’s bullet-proof graphene alloy. By 3 am, the printer structure was visibly corroding, slowing production. Soon the printer begins malfunctioning and emitting sharp industrial noises. Its newly-minted components began disintegrating.
“This barbarity is obscene, criminal!”, announced President Monbieux to the transfixed Urabians watching the disintegration.
Dawn broke the storm. The Limax secretions had corroded tiny holes in every hinge, joint, pivot, and fulcra which were perfect for early-rising Neuroptera – net-winged flies – to lay their eggs. The larvae hatch within an hour and gorge on the nutrient-rich cocktail of love mucus and base minerals abandoned during the ongoing corrosion of the graphene alloy. The hungry larvae devour for the morning in the shade of the umbrella, before transforming into winged giants and flying to their nocturnal feeding grounds.
The larvae albumen provided the final fatal ingredient to the chemical cocktail, rendering the printer inert. By dusk, all components new and old stopped communicating. The unstable umbrella detached with that evening’s first winds, and communication with Urabia was lost.
Across Urabia, pictures loomed on screens around Urabia of Limax and Neuroptera tag-teamed destruction of the Fexil Box and its printers. Nostalgic Urabians wistfully remembered the innocence of their schooldays, and the midnight launches of the homemade Fexil Boxes promoting peace and love across their solar system.
“This aggression cannot go unpunished! What sort of race deserves to live that would destroy a child’s toy!”
by submission | Nov 1, 2018 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
“Wally, do remember what they used to call us back in fourth grade?”
Wally bobbed his head up and down “Uh-huh, sure do. You were Adrian the alien and I was Wally the werewolf.”
Adrian chuckled. “I was a bit strange back then, before I learned to fit in.”
Wally shook his head. “And I didn’t help things by saying you didn’t smell human. But it didn’t slow you down. Yeah, you learned how to fit in, all the way to prom king. Me- it just got worse until, well, I never fit in. Except for the church group. I wouldn’t have fit in anywhere if it wasn’t for them.”
Adrian sighed. “Whatever.” He shook his head. “But I remember you actually thought you were a werewolf. Your parents came in, psychologists…”Adrian’s voice trailed off.
Wally shrugged his shoulders. “What can I say, Adrian? I was a weird kid with a lot of issues. Didn’t get things sorted out until later in life. Found my true purpose so-to-speak. Got saved.”
Adrian nodded. At least Wally had the good sense not to try to preach to him. Adrian cleared his throat. “Well, why I asked you out here tonight was to tell you something about all those years ago,” Adrian motioned Wally to come closer. He leaned in to Wally “I really am an Alien.”
Wally took a step back. Adrian blinked his eyes and then the protective second eyelid that made his eyes look all golden. He smiled. “In two months, after hundreds of years of planning, we will take over your planet. When the dust settles, I’ll come find you and offer you my protection. We’re allowed a quota.”
Wally shook his head. “And I’m a real werewolf Adrian.”
Adrian shook his head and sighed. “This is no joke. In two months’ time, we take over.”
Wally sighed. “No Adrian, you won’t. You ever wonder how such a choice morsel like the earth has avoided invasion for so many thousands of years, Hmm?
Adrian chuckled “I don’t know what you think-”
Wally held up his hand for Adrian to stop talking. “It doesn’t matter now, it’ll be over soon.”
Adrian looked bewildered. Wally went on. “36 different species have tried taking over the earth since the age of the pyramids. Thirty-six that vanished overnight. Why? Folks like me. Me, my church group. See, according to our church doctrine, God put us on this planet to guard the flock. We protect earth from the likes of you.”
Adrian looked even more bewildered. Wally smiled sympathetically “I know. It was a lot for me to come to grips with which is why I had such a bad time at school. But once I got in synch with the pack, well, it all made sense.”
Wally finished his drink, stood up and flexed his hands. “Being in synch, that was the key. See, we of the pack then can all strike at once- three to one odds at a minimum, no prisoners, as few witnesses as possible.”
Adrian noticed the bartender locking the door. The elderly couple in the corner stood up and began walking over, the barfly two seats over smiled in a not too friendly fashion.
Adrian shook his head and laughed as the circle closed around him. “We never saw it coming.”
Wally sighed, as he extended his canines and claws. Deep throated feral growls bubbled up from his confederates as they closed for the kill. Wally shook his head. “You never do.”
by submission | Oct 31, 2018 | Story |
Author: Malcolm Carvalho
The algorithm has just been published. I move my fingers over the cylinder in the centre of the room. A tube runs into it. I verify the cylinder’s valve can easily control the flow and pressure of the hydrogen atom stream coming into the cylinder.
I retrieve Neha’s profile from the cloud. As I read the first few details, her lavender scent envelopes me, tingling my neck. I hear her voice. The gibberish she would say just to sound funny. Boy, didn’t that work?
I return to my computer and move my finger up the profile intensity slider. I can now feel her arms around me, her feet moving in a one-two waltz, her head against my shoulder.
Enough of these recreated memories. I want Neha back now, in person. Let the illusion become real.
The screen shows the institute has added new data to her records. Lines and lines of symbols encoding her composition. All I need to do is convert these symbols into machine language. The parser will read the translated code, fuse the hydrogen into higher elements and compounds, and then structure them according to the orientation in the symbols.
It will take about twenty hours to get Neha back. In the flesh. Fusing her cloud profile into her body may take another hour.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. What if something goes wrong? Like what? Stop overthinking. What could be worse than losing her forever?
#
I have followed the procedure to the Tee. My feet tremble as I walk to the door. I push it open.
“Baboo!” The voice is shrill. I’m sure it’s not just in my head. Can’t wait to hold her.
Neha is sitting in a corner. Everything’s perfect, the mole below her lip, the thick eyelashes, the inch-long scar near her left collarbone. Her eyes look through me, as if they are focussing at an infinite distance and I am a transparent screen.
She holds my hand and squeezes it. “Baboo, it never felt like I went away.”
#
Her body has shrivelled further, her arms limp and her lips chapped. It looks like she has difficulty breathing. Her chin is sagging. I cannot understand. It’s been about a month since I got her back.
I sit beside her and hold her hand. It is smaller. What has BodAI done?
#
I go through the terms and conditions of the contract, pausing after every point. This is difficult to understand, but I will plough through it.
Note 3(d) settles it for me.
Bones and flesh generated by BodAI using the symbol data will age quicker than in naturally living humans.
An asterisk follows the statement. I read the footnote.
As more people use the BodAI Human Printer, we deplete our hydrogen reserves at a quicker rate than we generate it. The only way to catch up with this deficit is to periodically reconvert some of the generated bodies back into hydrogen, and unlock it for others to use. We do this by rapidly accelerating the aging process of the resurrected person. On the fiftieth day, the person will be gone. You may reapply to recover him/her back after a gap of two weeks, so that others can have their loved ones back.
I look up the calendar. It’s been exactly thirty-eight days since I got her back.
I rush back. “Dinner time?” I hear her call as I lock the door.
I can avoid her for the next twelve days. And wait for another two weeks. That’s better than seeing her grow old and senile.
by submission | Oct 30, 2018 | Story |
Author: DJ Lunan
Tung carefully poured the molten metallic liquid into the stone mould. Almost three litres heated to 650 degrees. The orange liquid sizzled in contact with the colder, crystal marble of his signature insignia cast into a double shield reminiscent of a butterfly. The molten metal whipped around the oval shape, licked the corners hungrily eating the space, gravity and guilt mixed with freedom, grand design and art. A design that would change the world, he’d heard.
Tung sat down on the forge’s only stool, overheated and thirsty. Sweat was falling onto the earth floor in great summer-rainstorm droplets.
Other blacksmiths believe now is the time to douse the object with water, lift it out of its cast, and turn the newborn object to the light. Start pummelling imperfections, buff until it shines bright. But Tung believed in giving chemicals time. Time that he alone had.
This month’s order, almost complete. Butterflies. Always his initial butterfly design. Two heavy gold coins. Art in time.
“Its like cutting a chrysalis to free a struggling pupae”, he argued, typically after too much wet mead and deer trotter soup at the Laser Quest Arms, “it produces a butterfly for sure, one that flies, breathes, farts and mates, but one utterly devoid of colour”.
“Tung, you have to think about the efficiency of your work – you need to be more productive”, the young ‘uns retorted, each too perfect, unscarred, unburdened to see beyond transactions.
The simple economics of short transactional fleeting lives: produce as many as possible, as cheap as possible, and sell them as quickly as possible. Capture more of your time. The young forgers needed their time to impress future mates, make families, buy land, build camps, and fight invaders.
“You only produce one each day?! Tung, you are pre-capitalism, pre-Lean, pre-just-in-time, pre-internet!”, laughed Mortica, his closest neighbour.
But Tung had a different agenda. His time was endless. His metal was not for sale. Not in this time. Everything was destined for the Revolutionary Guardians of the last Century whose cause would not be in vain.
Their orders appeared every month, enveloped, exact chemical composition fully detailed on old media. Paper. Small pile of gold coins. Same design.
She put her warm arm around his shoulders assuringly, not like the professionals, more like a lover. Her dreadlocks dipped in Tung’s mead.
“I was cut open too early, I am devoid of colour”, she lamented sleepily, “Remake me beautiful, stunning, shining?”.
She stroked his beard purposely so he could see his butterfly design tattooed on her hand.
“I am the Queen, thanks to your design, my Revolutionary Guardians are winning”, she murmured as he carried her to his forge, “Your time is over. My time is beginning”.
Tung bought a coffin, filled it with sand and xiithium gum. He paid triple price for all Mortica’s reserves of alumina. They made two casts front and back of the Queen, pouring the hot orange liquid for hour-after-hour.
“Hammer my imperfections, polish away my dirt”, she whispered.
Bellows, sweat, earth, pressure, heat, beauty.
She cried each time they made love, purring, “You have made me Queen, let me make our Princes Kings”.
Using ropes, levers, and counterweights, they joined and fused the pieces, adding the shield to its back.
“You can’t come with us”, sang the twin Queens harmoniously, vapourising, as Tung felt time slip. The cold whipped in, frost quickly advanced down his chimney, through his door, delving deep into the molten metals in the forge.
He got into the coffin, still radiating their warmth, closed his eyes and hoped his next placement would be somewhere warm.
by Hari Navarro | Oct 29, 2018 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
Beneath a stark winter hue that washes but never cleans a young woman lays naked, the cold winds filthy besom scratching as it dusts her with crystals that flurry as ash.
A security camera gazes down blind and useless.
The upward gaze that meets it is as vacant as it is piercing. Right arm disjointed, grotesquely it folds beneath the gentle sweep of her arching back. Skin once perfect, though now weary with abrasions and abuses both new and old, holds stoic and still.
A solitary figure hunches.
“Such fun as you gorge and tongue at my mind”, said this man to the worm in his head.
“What do you ask? Pity, or is it lust you wish to provoke?”, he sighs. “I sense your taunt, nobody will cry for me as they will for her”
“I’m not dead”
There’s movement behind his eye and his brain contracts and releases.
“… and so, I become madness?”
He splays his jacket atop the woman, averting his eyes he speaks to the whipping breeze as yet another flurry lays litmus, settling, drinking the toxins of the street into its every last pore.
“Who did this?”
“People did this. The people who started your war, they who died in it and those who brought it to an end. It was you. It was me”
There is a box. A home of phenolic sheets that once slotted into the brain of a great computer, its golden pathways and scattering of remaining components drip the sweet scent of mercury, lead and cadmium as he lowers it carefully to cover her head and torso. Though he can do nothing for her perfect legs as they protrude out and into the ramping cold.
“Hold me till morning. They’ll come and you’ll be safe”
“I know a place with soup”
“Fuck the soup, Francis. Lay down. Bite, tear a strip from my lip and taste that I’m here, warm your cold hands at the cup of my breasts, gorge on me. Just please don’t go”
But he does go, inching beneath the city of airships that buoy high above. An escape for the privileged from the poisons that eat at the feet of the poor.
Hours have passed as he now kneels, shifting his home to one side. The woman is still, eyes fixed and staring as he lays a cup to her lip and pours. Frozen lumps slip across hardened features and slide from the ridge of her jaw.
“You came back Frank. Stay”
“I can not”
“Nothing’s here. You’ve given all to me. Dignity and warmth. A home and now… your only food”
“I gave nothing”
“You can’t fucking leave… fucking self-pitying deadbeat… baby killer…”
Morning breaks, but it is not the sun that unfurls into this ally of loading bays and acid-rain pitted iron doors. The beams are man-made that now swing into a tight arch and hiss to a stop.
A mechanical hand reaches through the glare and with one fluid motion heaves the box into the asthmatic mouth of the waste transports gaping compacter.
Steel claws open and flex above the woman, then, a moment’s hesitation, before they drop crushing into her body.
The mannequin snaps and contorts as she is sucked beneath screeching hydraulic plates that stuff her away and into darkness.
The body of a soldier, the fool who could not distinguish plastic from skin, lost and already forgotten as unloved things so easily are, lays propped against a frozen red wall.
Alone, but for the carcass of the gray worm that had so relentlessly churned in his head.
