by submission | Dec 17, 2024 | Story |
Author: Majoki
To dream is the dream. Anyone thinking that we need to sleep to live is missing the real payoff. We should be living to sleep. Snow White had it right for the wrong reasons. She didn’t bite a poisoned apple, she micro-dosed from the forbidden fruit of the real tree of knowledge: somna.
Why would anyone want to wake up to our messy reality when you can now literally sleep your life away? Actually, more like twenty lives. Maybe no one is ready to go all Methuselah with biosuspension fields yet, but after decades of successful manned missions to and beyond the Kuiper Belt the groundbreaking stasis technology appears to be extremely stable.
Biosuspension fields are an amazing and necessary technological achievement for deep space travel, but it’s somna that makes it psychologically possible for humans to endure stasis for years on end. Somna is the juice that makes the squeeze worth it. And there are a lot of folks that wish somna was actually a juice or serum or pill, something you could just ingest or inject. Unfortunately, it’s not as straightforward as biting into Snow White’s doctored apple.
Somna is an idea. A thought worm. Not quite a meme or memory, and more like a mom’s “gentle reminder” to get your act together. Because that’s what you have to do with somna: put your act together. Or acts. You have to basically stage your dreams before you go into stasis. In your mind, you set the scene, the players, the actions. And the somna technique trains the brain to follow that neural pathway into heavy, sustained R.E.M. The more elaborately and authentically you somna, the more likely that you’ll have a positive dream experience that can make stasis feel like well lived years. Some say it’s more entertaining, edifying, and exciting than real life.
Sounds great, right? That’s the catch. Somna techniques have gotten so good at preparing deep space crews for amazing years-long dream experiences that increasingly, many crew members have become irate or depressed or mutinous upon being awakened from stasis. They don’t want to deal with the cold, hard reality of actually living and working in deep space. Hard to blame them.
Hard to blame anyone. Because the word is out and endless blissful sleep is in. Somna parties have become a thing. Biosuspension bootleggers are bringing lala land to the masses. And the masses are turning on and dropping out of reality. Crafting your dreamland ala Sophocles, Murasaki, Shakespeare, Austen, Tolstoy, Hammet, Ibsen, Marquez, Asimov, Achebe, Rowling, etc. is a temptation few can resist. Fewer and fewer do.
Soon we may be holding wakes for wakefulness. Simultaneously mourning and celebrating the end of conscious living. Is this the final battle for humanity? Have we lost the will to struggle and push forward?
Tough to know what lies ahead, but when you can invite the likes of Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Confucius, Attila the Hun, Saladin, Leonard Da Vinci, Joan of Arc, Harriet Tubman, Mother Teresa, Malcolm X and Taylor Swift into your mind for a dreamy sleepover, you know the pillow fights will be epic.
by Julian Miles | Dec 16, 2024 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“DAY-NA!”
The roar of anger is so loud it stops everyone. Dayna, presumably the being we’ve managed to corner after a three-hour citywide chase, was dubbed ‘Jaqueline the Ripper’ by the newsfeeds. Surrounded by rings of armoured vehicles and furious enforcers, she was laughing. Now she looks scared. What’s coming?
A fiery golden aura surrounds the petite being that descends, an elegant ballgown moving languidly as they do so.
The aura vanishes as they land and stride towards Dayna, who starts stammering out what sounds like a justification by its tone. I can’t be sure because nobody has come up with an Aziasen lingo patch for our not-so universal translators.
“We will conduct this discussion in Humanese Type Four.”
The latest arrival looks back at me. Green-tinged silver skin, mauve eyes, no pupils.
“My name is Ayse. Can you understand me?”
I nod.
“May I continue chastising this woeful being?”
Going to need to find a voice for this. Slow breath, and –
“My name is Mike. Yes, for the moment. That might change when my seniors or embassy representatives arrive.”
She smiles. Whoa my, that’s more fangs than most.
“Not soon, I hope. I loathe being reminded about etiquette when the situation demands otherwise.”
All of a sudden, I’m sure Ayse isn’t a junior dignitary.
Clara, my partner, leans across and whispers.
“This could be good. Or really, really bad.”
I whisper back.
“Agreed. Be ready to go shields up while sprinting away like angry space vampires are chasing you.”
“That would be a lot funnier if it wouldn’t be true.”
While we banter, Ayse continues walking towards Dayna – who seems to be trying to reverse through the wall she’s up against.
“YOU WERE TOLD NOT TO DRINK ANY MORE HUMANS!”
My ears hurt.
Dayna starts waving her hands placatingly.
“Only one! Just one! I was SO thirsty. I only stopped for sip.”
Ayse looks back at me.
“How many died in the most recent incident?”
“Inside the venue or during the pursuit?”
“Venue.”
I check my datapad.
“Everyone at the Boco Congo nightclub: thirty-eight clients, seven staff, and four security personnel.”
She turns back to Dayna.
“You might have intended to sip, but your rassmea is clearly out of control.”
Dayna waves her hands dismissively.
“No, no. I’ll be fine tomorrow. Just let me sleep it off. I’ll be back on the program.”
“YOU’RE GOING NOT GOING BACK ON THE PROGRAM. YOU’RE GOING BACK TO AZIAS!”
Dayna looks horrified.
“YOU CAN’T SEND ME HOME! There aren’t any humans there. I can’t go without; they taste SO GOOD!”
Movement happens before I can react. By the time my mind catches up with reality, Dayna is lying on the ground between Ayse and us.
Ayse looks up from the prone form.
“May I please take my human-addicted kith away, officer? She will be off-planet before dawn tomorrow. I give blood-bond to you that she will never return.”
A blood-bond is an absolute guarantee, which is a far better-than-expected result. All Aziasen have what amounts to diplomatic immunity. I was expecting to end tonight – and my career – involved in a diplomatic incident because I killed one.
“You may. Is rassmea treatable?”
“If a sufferer really wants free of it. Sadly, this one hasn’t had any of her whims denied since she was a child. It is best she forever be kept apart from humans.”
The fiery golden aura surrounds them. They rise into the air.
Ayse nods to me.
“Thank you for not slaying my sister.”
They’ll never know how close I came, and that’s a very good thing.
by submission | Dec 15, 2024 | Story |
Author: Don Nigroni
I met Nancy in college, and we got married shortly after she received her PhD. While I’m smarter than the average bear, Nancy is brilliant. I work for a stock brokerage firm, and she worked for the Department of Energy until three years ago when she joined a private consortium to do basic research.
This morning, she confided in me. “As you know,” she said, “ever since I was an undergrad, I thought Haldane was right when he wrote, ‘The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’
There are always alternative theories that can explain any facts and we use values to select among them: simplicity, elegance, fruitfulness. But, regardless, as for the facts themselves, we can only directly know sense data, never the real causes of our perceptions. That’s simply the human condition. I’ve known for some time that the only way we’d ever really know what’s behind our sense data would be to rely on extrasensory perception. But humans just didn’t evolve that way.”
“So, you’re saying we can’t ever know, and you’ve been spinning your wheels your entire adult life.”
I sheepishly admit that I took a smidgen of pleasure in that.
“I can’t know directly because I’m human, but I could be informed of the Truth with a capital T by someone who evolved differently and does have extrasensory abilities. Yesterday morning, I was telepathically contacted by someone in a parallel universe. She knew all about my lifelong struggle to learn the Truth.
According to her, her race evolved without any external sense organs, no sight, no hearing, etc. They navigate their world by extrasensory means. They can detect waves, nearby and at a great distance, directly and immediately. They also have telepathic and psychokinetic abilities. The bottom line is waves are behind our sensory data, just waves.”
“Like light waves and sound waves?”
“No, just an interconnected network of non-physical waves with varying vibrations which generate our perceived realities which exist only in our minds. The scary part is that if any wave in the system is flatlined then the whole network collapses and nothing interesting could exist in that universe forevermore.”
“So, she warned you not to build your Ultimate Reality Device.”
“No, she warned me not to use it. She told me I didn’t know what I was doing, and that I didn’t know what could happen. She explained my procedure and its consequences to me mathematically, but I won’t bore you with the details. So, I destroyed the infernal machine, and all of the material related to the research project late yesterday.”
“Your backers won’t be happy. How will you ever explain to them that years of work and trillions of dollars spent on research and development were all for naught?”
“I won’t. My contact assured me that she would inform them . . . and elicit their consent.”
by submission | Dec 14, 2024 | Story |
Author: David C. Nutt
I took a swig straight out of the bottle of the rare, vintage wine- didn’t even let the damn thing breathe. It cost me only $8,420.00 USD, on sale from $10,000.00. As a relatively new multi-billionaire I didn’t even feel the cost. The wine sucked. Tasted like grape flavored caustic lye.
By no coincidence at all, the “discount” equals exactly the number of meteors (minus six zeros) scheduled to hit the earth. None larger than a soft ball but clustered in such a way the earth, the entire earth, will be hit for about two years straight with this galactic buck shot. Imagine being hit with rock salt fired out of a 20 gauge shot gun. Not lethal, just stinging, annoying, and painful. Now, stand and take the shot gun blast of rock salt for an entire week, turning slowly around to get even coverage.
Get the picture?
So what’s that got to do with me?
Well, when I was 19 I took all my college money and invested in the first asteroid mining start up. They said we were naïve and crazy- suckers. We became the butt of jokes for 8 years. Until our ships came in. My cut? A modest $800 billion.
Our little group of investors disrupted the world economy all by ourselves. I bought multiple properties, all over the world. I became a Count of Montecristo-like figure, without the revenge schtick. Actually, more like a kinder, gentler, less evil Bond villain. You know, like Bezos or Musk.
Then the bad news hit. Our mining expedition was like a cue ball shot into a rack of long stationary billiard balls. Change the specific gravity of one by mining it, its orbit alters, hits another which causes more collisions and changes in orbits, and so on, and so on. Yup, a master class in unintended consequences and the horrors of third and fourth order effects. About 8,420 million effects roughly speaking.
And now? All my major properties have become redoubts- apocalypse fortresses. On average, I have about three Walmart’s worth of stuff at each. Several devoted to housing the machinery needed for rebuilding the world. I even gave a couple of billion to the dudes who save seeds and animal DNA to harden their facilities or build new ones. My employees and their families? Taken care of and sheltered on site. Not in little hovels either.
When the hard rain stops, and we poke our heads out, me and all of us who invested will be fine. So will the governments who accepted our help. Oh, and before you go there, fuck the Bilderberg folk, the oil sheiks and the like, we already took them out of the equation…permanently. Can’t have them messing up our group saving the world for everyone and anyone, hmm? Well, everyone and anyone who’ll work with us.
See, our folk figure that we’ll only lose a little over half the world population. Mother earth will take a beating, but nothing she can’t come back from on her own, faster if we help, which we’ll be in a position to do. Plus, with all that asteroid/meteor iron ore, gold, titanium, lithium, not to mention rare earth materials, peppered all over the globe, it’s easier to mine than it ever has been, with our group the only ones in position to actually make it happen. Not bad for a kid who spent all his college money on a crazy start up, huh?
Yup, we’ll remake the world…kinder and gentler with more to go around. Well, at least for us and ours.
by submission | Dec 13, 2024 | Story |
Author: Clare Strahan
Pat had to turn the drone over, to get to the metal hatch door and unscrew the screws that fixed it to the body. What did the drone think of, when Pat wasn’t there? Did it remember the battlefield, the shrapnel and wounding, the fall into the ocean, the washing up on a strange shore? Should he show it the articles and reports? Could it read offline?
Do you think of home? Pat asked.
The drone rolled its eye towards him. Do you mean homing?
Don’t worry about it.
Am I incorrect?
Could a machine feel shame? Patrick recognised the shadow of it in the drone’s question. The hot-cold flush of embarrassment – like in spelling tests or comprehension questions. The sticky sweat and chill of failure. There was something he wasn’t understanding, and everyone would laugh as soon as they knew it. He was sure he saw it in the drone’s searching eye and couldn’t tell if the recognition made him happy or sad.
I hated school, Pat said. I spent lunchtimes hiding in the toilets or behind the library.
The drone swivelled its eye again. Didn’t anybody notice you were gone?
No.
Partially untethered, the drone’s leg flopped out, on the ground. Looking closer, Pat saw it wasn’t a leg it was a weapon. Some kind of gun. This was definitely the war drone Jeb had been talking about. The one that briefly blipped on the radar. That blip was Pat’s fault. A quick blip between waking it up and getting it offline. If the drone killed them all, that would be Pat’s fault too.
The air around the drone was buzzing. You weren’t very good at school. You weren’t very good at school.
But it wasn’t the drone speaking at all. It was Pat’s brother, Jeb, at dinner. Pat was still living at home with his parents and Jeb had just graduated as a doctor. You weren’t very good at school.
It wasn’t pity, exactly.
It was justification.
by submission | Dec 12, 2024 | Story |
Author: Trinity J. Choi
“W-who are you?”
Those were the three most painful words I’d heard my entire life.
“Someone who loves you dearly.” I responded, unable to control the slight crack in my voice. I could see my face shining back at me through her empty eyes. The reflection of a sister she doesn’t recognize. Hopefully she’ll live in blissful ignorance, bear children, build a new family, and die never knowing the truth that almost cost her her life.
“I’m sorry, I-I’m confused-” Vicki started to fully wake up, pushing herself up from laying on her back. Her gaze hovered from the tears illuminated by moonlight, streaming down my face to the trees that surrounded us. She stared eyes wide and mouth agape as she took in the unfamiliar environment she found herself in.
A cold wind blew, leaves rustled, and a chill ran down both our spines. Reaching out, I tucked a piece of loose hair behind her ear and wrapped my cloak around her.
Vicki looked back up at me with her brows furrowed, but she glanced back between the trees once we heard the sound of shuffling footsteps grow closer. Bright white lights flickered as they enclosed us. We both squinted and her breathing became unsteady, lifting her hand to shield her eyes.
My head ached, I knew so much more than I had seconds before.
A loud voice boomed among the crowd of armed creatures: familiar but inhuman, deep and threatening.
“Vickaria the Kingslayer, you have been discovered. Obey and your people will live.” Vicki whipped her head around to look at me, her eyes wide with fear.
It’s too late for me to change my mind and run now.
Stumbling to my feet, I held my hands up in surrender. Sounds of cocking guns filled the quiet woods, further confirmation of how my story will end. If it is to be in her place, then so be it. “Vickaria isn’t the real Kingslayer, it’s me!”
“Ryana you have no involvement in the corruption within our Sky Castles. Vickaria is the leader of the rebellion. Turn her into us and we will continue to keep you and your colleagues safe while we return Earth to its former glory.” There was a murmur of agreement among the faceless crowd.
Smoke covered skies, oil filled rivers, and every animal but us wiped out of existence. We knew it was all a lie now, they’d probably just kill us all.
I glanced down at Vicki, she was running her fingers through the dying grass and feeling the dirt under her palms. She may not recognize it now, but she was willing to die for this place just minutes ago.
The piercing sound of Oli’s voice screaming the truth through everyone’s screens that day, suddenly came to mind. My head pounded, recollecting of the noise his throat made, slit as he fought and screamed to the very end.
It’s difficult to tell what memories are mine and hers. I’m starting to understand what it feels like to lose someone you love. I can’t imagine what she went through.
Vicki waved her hand to speak, “I-I really don’t know what’s going on! Please tell them! The last thing I remember is–”
I interjected before she could finish, “If you don’t think I’m telling the truth, check my memory! Yeah that’s right, I know you guys can do that!”
In the dark, the creatures exchanged glances. As far as they’re concerned, memory is the only true piece of evidence. I placed my hand on Vicki’s shoulder with a stern expression. The more she didn’t know, the safer she was. “Go on.” I prompted her.
“I don’t know how I got here and I’m not a Kingslayer! How do you know my name?!” She cried out, “Where am I?!”
There was a mumble amongst the crowd, confusion most likely. The owner of the intimidating voice stepped forward.
We finally got to see his true form, a tall and gruesome looking thing. With each step, it inched closer to us. I knelt down and wrapped my arms around Vicki, her shoulders rejecting my embrace. The self proclaimed ‘King’ stopped in its tracks just a few inches away.
“Do you know this woman?” It asked Vicki, a talon pointed in my direction. Covering half her face with my cloak, she shook her head violently. The King looked me over with a sharp toothed smile.
“Leave Vicki alone, and I’ll show you how I did it.” I whispered, quiet enough that only the three of us could hear. “Swear that you will use it to erase what she found and things can go back to the way they used to be.”
A simple exchange: my life for everyone else’s.
“What makes you think I’ll oblige?” the King asked, leaning closer. Vicki’s eyes darted back and forth as we spoke, curiosity getting the best of her yet again. I pulled the cloak further over her eyes. More flashes of memories, a younger version of myself tucking me into bed.
“It’s that or I turn and run right now, your men will kill me on the spot, and you’ll never know how to take people’s memories.” I spoke those last few words as quietly as I could, praying that Vicki couldn’t hear.
The King’s smile gradually turned downward. “Fine. As long as everything’s destroyed.” It kneeled to meet Vicki’s eyes. “Count yourself lucky, Kingslayer.”
With that, the King walked away. A wave of its talons, and a herd of creatures overcame us. Sharp claws pulled and tugged at us, forcing us to separate. It was instinct that forced me to cling onto her for dear life, “I love you..” I managed to blurt out, completely aware of how little it meant to her. But it meant everything to me.
Dragged away, I watched her form blend into the darkness. Letting out a sigh of relief, I closed my eyes and recalled her most recent memory, just before I stole it from her. Arguments, tears, and broken promises. I used her little discovery against her.
It’s my job to take responsibility, it has been since she was born. I just wish memories could be deleted instead of taken. I don’t want to die, but ‘as long as everything is destroyed’ means the truth can only disappear if it’s host does too.
