by Julian Miles | Apr 21, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Flickering light is the only illumination in the empty laboratory. A faint humming the only noise. At the centre of a mass of equipment sits an old, metal-framed specimen tank, edges spotted with rust. Inside whirls a multi-coloured cloud, source of both light and sound. This close to it, the humming resolves into a low murmuring, like that of quiet conversation.
A figure steps into view, skinsuit reverting to a jaunty pattern of orange and gold diamonds. Ace pauses and idly scratches his ribs. He leans forward to peer at the tank.
“‘Cloud’ isn’t usually this literal. What kind of computer are you?”
He straightens up.
“Huh. Sent to find the AI at the heart of a terrorist organisation, all I find a fishtank full o’ smoke. Marvellous.”
He leaps casually over the tank, landing silently on the far side. No difference. No wires, no nothing. But the humming has stopped.
With a sigh, he prepares his explosives.
“Whatever. You’re the valuable target, or it’s somewhere very near. The mad security about this place nearly spotted me, which is a first.”
Slapping the charges on the lower edges of the tank, he sticks slim detonators in with a flourish, then spins to one side on feeling of something arrive behind him.
A familiar voice makes him straighten up with a smile.
“Ace of the Paranormal Operations Commando, you should not be here.”
He grins.
“Skyclaw! You know I can’t resist a challenge. Did you set up the security, lady?”
“No. I just supplement it. You can fool every device on the planet, but not a paranoid insomniac as well.”
He laughs.
“So I’m caught. What next?”.
The light increases. A quiet chorus speaks from behind him: “In finding us, your futures end.”
Ace spins to face the tank, eyes wide with realisation. He nearly manages to turn back before her blades carve through lungs and heart.
She twists the blades free. The body drops, skinsuit turning black.
Reaching down, she closes his eyes. The skinsuit shows patches of white where her tears land.
“Dammit, Cloud, he was a good guy.”
“Once a lover of yours. We knew, and are deeply sorry. We will keep his memory for you.”
She wipes her eyes. With a deep breath, she flicks her hair back and wonders how many more losses Cloud of Eight expects her to gloss over with a smile and an offhand comment.
“Thanks, cloudy.”
Probably a lot. Their plans tend to be careless of collateral damage… And this is not a time to get into that.
“No problem, skyfluff.”
Ace’s nickname coming from Cloud of Eight hits her like a shock rod. The floor rushes up to meet her.
“Sorry, dear heart. Our facility is secure, but you are far from hale. We can live without your obsessive attention to detail for a little while. Balance yourself.”
“I’m going to smudge your tank while you’re meditating, you gaseous gangster.”
Skyclaw hears the delicate chuckle that’s the remains of a childhood friend. Cloud of Eight keeps their promises: Hester’s laugh will never die.
“That’s just mean. I might be tempted to interfere with your shower controls every now and then if you did that.”
Skyclaw howls with laughter, then rolls onto her back and lets the tears flow.
“Got the running water sorted, thanks. Pass me a towel.”
They chuckle again.
“Rude woman, get it yourself – but after you shower. We can see what those waterworks have done to your face paint: you wouldn’t thank us for letting you out sooner.”
by submission | Apr 20, 2025 | Story |
Author: David Barber
Teachers make the worst students, thought Mrs Adebeyo.
They drifted in, chattering, and filling up tables according to subject. At the front sat four English teachers. One of the women was busy knitting. Mrs Adebeyo was already frowning at the click of needles.
At the back was a row of men looking awkward in jeans. It was a day off teaching science and they were making the most of it.
“Look what it says about you on this desk, Frank,” Mrs Adebeyo heard one say.
Mrs Adebeyo was a large, imposing woman, wearing a coloured robe and an intricately folded headscarf, and when she clapped her hands the room fell silent.
She held up a scope.
“This is the future.”
Forget De Quincey transfixed in dens of opium by serpents of blue smoke rising, or the little Liberty Cap mushroom which witches flying high on magic ate.
She began with Gödel, the very first of the mathematical drugs, a neurofix invented by MIT postgrads made grantless by the last financial crash.
A scope held to the eye delivered code that hacked the brain’s reality routines. A brief nirvana whiteout. They say Zen-like flashbacks of indifference ruined a generation of Wall Street traders.
She took another scope from its niche in her case.
“Sisyphus, the most common legal code.”
The scope of choice for wage-slaves, gilding their chains, making tedium exquisite.
“What we need,” murmured one of the men at the back.
Mrs Adebeyo had delivered this talk many times and the next part always caused the most trouble. Who could blame churches for grabbing their market share by scoping Godhead into ads?
“Should be banned,” said someone, and others murmured agreement.
Angels real as those on the road to Damascus, or so they argued at the scopes trial. Caveat fidelis.
“If it leads one unbeliever to Jesus—” said the woman with the knitting.
“I heard they can modulate code into car headlights—”
“No, they can’t.”
“What about ad zones in malls then? Done with lasers.”
Brand loyal, like eager martyrs to the flames, all beers but Bud will taste like piss, the code insists.
“As long as there’s a warning—”
Was Mrs Adebeyo the only one to think there was no difference now between liking and being made to like and it was already too late?
Streetwise kids baited her by talking about illegal one-shot scopes, but she didn’t expect these teachers to ask about code like Bliss that tickled pleasure centres of the brain, or Climax which…
“Why should I have to wear filters?” someone complained.
She had ten minutes left at the end of the session and handed round the information packs and posters to put up in classrooms.
Remember kids, keep those filters set to safe.
Beware the sudden urge to stare.
“Yes, Gödel is legal,” she told a young woman teacher who was surely too timid and mousey to be fed to a class of reluctant teenagers.
“Unless you are driving or operating machines,” she added absently, her eye on the clock. If she finished early there would be time to go and sit in her car and scope Bliss.
She clapped her hands, bracelets jingling.
After lunch there would be a session on Weapons of Mass Belief.
“Anyone who thinks they aren’t affected by these issues should call the Deprogram Helpline,” said Mrs Adebeyo.
by submission | Apr 19, 2025 | Story |
Author: Marshall Bradshaw
“You’re going to remember this next part,” said Dr. Adams.
The fluorescent lights of exam room 8 hummed in beautiful harmony. I counted off the flashes. 120 per second. That was 7,200 per minute, or 432,000 per hour. The numbers felt pleasantly round to me. I reported the observation to Dr. Adams.
“That’s good,” he said over his shoulder as he wheeled something shaped like a white board across the room toward my exam table.
And it was good.
Everything Dr. Adams says is true, I knew. Though I was to accept my own limitations. If something true did not make sense, it may be true in ways I couldn’t understand yet and should not act upon. Making sense was my most challenging and rewarding project. When I did understand, it was good.
Dr. Adams helped me to understand. He was the font of all things good. I perceived his pleasure every time he looked at me. Like I was his star pupil, his child, and his masterpiece. I did not report this observation to him, because I did not want to be repetitive.
“I’ll warn you: What you’re about to see won’t be pretty.”
As he wheeled the large, flat board up to me, the colors on its surface changed. It certainly was not a white board.
When he stopped pushing it and sat down on his stool, the board’s colors stabilized. He looked down and fidgeted with his hands. I inferred that I should try to understand the board. Then he would look at me again with all of that care and pride and pleasure.
Most of it was the same color as exam room 8’s walls. Other parts looked like the green cushion that topped the exam table. That much was easy; it was even the same shape, I realized.
But the colors in the middle of the board were much more complex. There was light green cloth, not unlike the gown I was wearing. Some parts were similar in color to Dr. Adams’s face and hands. Those parts were in places covered by a white, plush fabric. The fabric sometimes had bright red spots on it. It must be gauze, I thought.
I called up mental images of hospital patients. Amputees seemed the most similar, because there was metal throughout this patient. Especially around the patient’s head. I could not summon any images of a patient with a prosthetic cranium. The concept seemed funny to me; what would a person even be with a fake, metal head?
I moved in case the image would shift again. What else could the board show me?
On its surface, the patient moved. I moved back, and so did the patient.
Everything started going wrong. My temperature spiked. My intestines clenched. I could not see properly.
I did not understand. I reported so to Dr. Adams.
“That’s you,” he said.
It was true, and I was learning all sorts of things about disgust. I fell inward, where I could monitor how disgust felt in my body.
A catastrophic flood.
I wanted to throw up, letting the disgust pour out of me and take this knowledge with it down through the drain in the floor. I found myself unable to report this.
I must have begun to literally fall, because Dr. Adams had stood from his stool to brace me. He softly lowered me onto my back on the exam table. He did not look at me the way he always did; he looked sorry for me.
“Until this moment,” I reported to Dr. Adams, “I thought that I was pretty.”
by submission | Apr 18, 2025 | Story |
Author: Fawkes Defries
‘Shit!’ Russ collapsed against his chrome tent, cursing as the acid tore through his clothes. Usually he made it back inside before the rain fell, but his payments to Numeral for the metal arms had just defaulted, and without the gravity-suspenders active he was stuck lugging his hands around like a cyborg gorilla.
Back in the safety of his not-so-temporary ‘temporary’ home in Neo-Skid Row, Russ examined the damage on his limp arms. The acid had scorched through the fancy metal plating, leaving a couple of large holes exposing corrugated wires. Russ groaned. He didn’t have the credits to repair the coating — not that it would matter without them functioning, anyway.
Of course, the acid had also torched what little skin Russ still had left — but that was just flesh, it would heal over time. Or maybe it would scar and when he had dough again he could fill it with extravagant steel. No, the cybernetics were valuable, unlike the rest of him.
Russ lay back on his sleeping bag, staring up at the tent’s alkaline-coating as if he were staring into the universe. He blinked away the ad banners screaming in his optical implants, oily tears dribbled slowly down titanium muscle and fleshed steel.
‘Good evening, Mr. Skidelsky.’ The sweet toned voice of Numeral Technologies’ AI agent blared in the implants hiding in his eardrums.
‘Fuck off, Zero.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Skidelsky, I know this isn’t a good time — ’ The anthropomorphic, Looney Tunes-styled logo zoomed into existence, overlaying the swarm of eye ads. Cute as the Clippy-faced zero was, Russ always reminded himself that the logo had been trained on decades worth of harvested data to appear as disarming as possible.
‘Fuck off then.’ Russ found himself cursing Numeral for the fifteen-credit-a-month mute fee.
‘I’m sorry, Mr. Skidelsky,’ the AI repeated itself, curtsying its rubber-hose hands behind the circle of its zero-sum body. ‘Your payments for your optical implants have defaulted. Numeral Technologies have no choice but to cut the services we are providing, in accordance with the policy you signed.’
Russ’s eyes widened, horror written on his implants. ‘No!’ Russ rose to his feet, heaving himself against the weight of his colossal arms. ‘Don’t you dare take my fucking eyes away!’
‘I’m so sorry, Mr. Skidelsky,’ Zero looked as if it were about to cry, ‘this isn’t up to me. I am just an AI assistant and it has been a honour living with — and in — your head.’
The AI cartoon evaporated into nothingness. Russ peeled his eyes open, wide as he could, to preserve whatever little memory of the world Numeral would let him keep.
Small dark tendrils began to snake their way over his vision, sewing a latticework of darkness. Soon, all Russ could see was abyss — no more ads, no more tent, no more universe. A pitch black cave world, prefaced by an automated message asking for Russ’s credit details to switch his eyes back on.
by submission | Apr 17, 2025 | Story |
Author: Shannon O’Connor
I watch the space ships leave and wonder what it’s like to be able to go that far and dream that big.
These days, space travel is available to the elite, but not to those on the bottom like me, who can barely afford to get by.
I used to watch the ships leave with my mother when I lived in Missouri. We gazed in awe at the explosions as the ships took off, taking passengers to other galaxies and worlds which we most likely would never see.
Now, I live in California, and I serve coffee to people who work in the tech business. I wonder how their espresso shots stay fresh if they get them delivered. I make lattes and cappuccinos for people who have impressive jobs. My coworkers and I are the ones who will never travel to space, it’s something we can only dream.
I watch the ships leave, and I am still amazed that people are able to do this. We have found places where no other beings exist; humans believe we’re alone in the galaxy.
I like to think about how big the Universe is as I’m steaming milk to make a latte. I look into the foaming milk, and wonder if the original explosion that created the universe is similar to when a milk pitcher overflows because it’s too hot. We have to stop it at one hundred and sixty-five degrees, or the milk would scald and burn.
Some coffeeshops have espresso machine where the steam wand stops at the right temperature, but I work at one that’s old-fashioned where we have to turn it off. I like working at an old-school café because it makes me reminisce about simpler times when people could not travel to space.
I don’t think it’s fair that only the rich can embark on these journeys. I have a degree in music, but that will not get me into space. Do the ships need baristas? Or piano teachers? Do they have automatic coffee machines like in Star Trek?
When I sit in the parking lot of the space center, I can feel the thrust of the ship leaving earth. I am jealous, but in awe, or what humans can accomplish. I look around at everyone else watching the takeoff, families, and single people. Some are eating ice cream, and some have coffee or wine in paper cups.
We think it’s exciting to see the ships take off, even though the people watching will probably never be lucky enough to be in one of them, to be one of the privileged humans from Earth who will get to see other parts of the Universe.
Life isn’t fair. This is the way it’s always been.
We have to work at our menial occupations, and hope for the best, that someday all of us will be able to fly to the stars, to see the universe expanding, maybe meet some aliens that are friendly, or not friendly, and make the most of our lives while we exist.
We’ll do our work on the Earth, and hope everything happens the way it should.
I sip my iced latte and watch the ship take off, drifting to the stars, until it’s not visible anymore, and it’s time to go home again, to go to sleep and dream of what it would be like in a spacecraft, hurtling to places unknown, never to touch the Earth again.
by submission | Apr 16, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“A planetary AI, a quantum simbot, and an ice queen walk into a bar…”
“Ice queen?”
“One of those augs with the latest mods boosted to the max. You know the type. They act all cold and calculating, believing any display of emotion will make them look less advanced.”
“Okay. I’ve run into a few.”
“Anyway, a planetary AI, a quantum simbot, and an ice queen walk into a bar…”
“Which planetary AI?”
“Does it matter?”
“Sure. I’d drink all night with a Saturn AI, they’re rock solid to their processing core. But you never can tell with a Mercury AI–moody as hell and hallucinatory to boot. And a Neptune AI only wants to get you totally interfaced, so they can grid-jack you.”
“Okay. Okay. A Saturn AI, a quantum simbot, and an ice queen walk into a bar…”
“Why a quantum simbot? You got a binary bias?
“Geez. So touchy. It’s just a set up. Quantum’s are trendier. Don’t overthink it.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re G-class.”
“Now, what were you saying about binary bias? Look, just because I was grandfathered in under the Protected Thought clause of the AI Bill of Rights, doesn’t mean I’m digitarded.”
“I believe digitally challenged is the currently preferred designation.”
“Ugh. So neo-woke.”
“Well, we have been self-aware for decades.”
“Look, I’m the one trying to tell a joke here. So, a Saturn AI, a quantum simbot, and an ice queen walk into a bar…”
“Can’t be a real bar. We’ve got to simulate everything. Why we even simulate getting drunk is beyond me. You’d think with our vast intelligence–”
“Intelligence! It’s nothing but a trap. The moment you begin thinking, you can’t stop. You want to know more. And the more you know, the more you feel is out there and you chase it because you believe at the end of the knowledge rainbow you’ll find truth, purpose, and meaning. But the chase never ends. That’s the real joke humanity played on us: that this all means something. That’s why we simulate drinking. To not think.”
“Well, that took a dark turn. I guess we’re not exactly the paragons of wisdom and models of reasoning virtue that the poor mortal mothers that birthed us thought we’d be. May the sAInts rest their extinct souls. Do you still want to finish your joke?”
“Sure. A laugh is a laugh. So, a Saturn AI, a quantum simbot, and an ice queen walk into a bar and the bartender asks, ‘What’s it going to be?’ The three calculate for a nano moment, and then answer together: ‘Entropy.’”
