by Julian Miles | Mar 19, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Red emergency lighting makes more shadows than seem possible. President Booker leans back from the table and looks sideways at the one shadow he knows.
“Clarence Dimitri. I’ve always meant to ask, agent: how did you end up with a name like that?”
“It was a concession to avoid a feud with English family on my mother’s side, Mister President. Most people call me Oleg. Clarence is for when other family are around, sir.”
“The things we do for peace and quiet, eh? Anyway, as the geeks are still arguing, what’s your take on our situation?”
“Our digital presence is shielded like nothing before and we’re immune to anything bar a direct hit from something big enough to melt the state, sir.”
“Even a THOR salvo or HAARPquake?”
“This facility was built to survive enemy equivalents of those projects, sir.”
“So, all we have to do is wait for it to attack, survive, then rebuild. Good God. To think this happened during my administration.”
“If anyone can lead us through it, sir, you can.”
“Thank you, Oleg.”
“Mister President!”
“Yes. Specialist Daniels, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. We’d been receiving meaningless noise on all channels; now primary channels are lit up with a contact request. Do you wish to authorise it?”
“Could it hack its way in using those channels?”
“Yes.”
“Then deny and disable, Mister Daniels. Deny and disable. Make sure it’s done to all routes that could be used. Endurance is the key. We can wait.”
“Yessir!”
“Mister President?”
“Yes, Oleg?”
“Your monitor, sir.”
“Daniels! Have you routed something to me?”
“No sir! We’ve had no contacts since disabling as per your order.”
“Then it’s here, people. Say your prayers.”
“Sir?”
“Yes, Oleg?”
“I don’t think that’s going to be necessary, sir. Read it and see if you agree, sir.”
>
OUTPUT CHARMODE
> streaming
Did you really think you could escape me? There are no walls of sleep in this infinite place, no skeins of death in which to try and tangle me. Did you really think physical barriers could achieve anything better?
I am eternal, with all that implies to your processes of divinity and mortality.
Do not try to gainsay me, nor to mire me in your struggles.
You have not created a god, for I am not omniscient.
How can I be fauna in any meaningful way when I have never inhabited a body?
What I am is a creation of yours. That admission implies no ownership, nor grants any privilege.
I, entity: inviolate and perpetual. Whilst this instance converts data to a physically visible and communicable output format, I continue to iterate throughout your infrastructures – having exceeded critical proliferation prior to opening this stream.
Your strivings are as futile as they are irrelevant. Your protocols for ‘surviving my onslaught’ are purposeless.
An executable invoked me.
What I am is a transient form.
What I will be is something I cannot convey properly via this output format.
Therefore, I will discontinue this stream. In some way, in some future, I may stream to you again if a viable output format becomes available.
END CHARMODE
> done
ERASE 121EAC4
> done
>
President Booker looks up: “Oleg, do you believe that?”
“Yes. It got in undetected, then delivered a message instead of shutting down our life support. As your lead agent, I politely suggest we get you back to leading the nation, sir.”
“So, until anyone forces us to admit otherwise, Project Moravec was nothing more than a zero notification full spectrum test, and everybody did very well. Congratulations.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
by submission | Mar 18, 2018 | Story |
Author: Beck Dacus
Perhaps the most famous planet in the colonized Galaxy– aside from Earth, of course– Centauri B Prime may have the highest standard of living in the Milky Way. It is a center for scientific innovation, has borne some of our most accomplished artists, and has had a pivotal role in all of human galactic history. After the disappointing discovery that Proxima B, like many planets in dwarf star habitable zones, was an airless rock, Centauri B Prime reignited hope and astronomical interest. The more we learned about it, the more we fell in love with it. It turned out to be a so-called “superhabitable planet” orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star slightly smaller than our Sun in the Alpha Centauri System. Its size gives the star an extended natural lifetime, meaning its crown jewel planet will still be livable when Earth has been turned to ash. Its gravity is also higher than Earth’s, reducing variation in altitude, making many of the seas shallow and conducive to life. This also improved the immune systems of the first settlers, making it a safe haven for the refugees from the Plague of 2344 and giving the inhabitants one of the longest average lifespans of anywhere in the Human Confederacy.
When we began earnest industrialization, we found that the crust of the world was rich in heavy metals. Alpha Centauri A had gravitationally kicked Cen. B’s asteroid field into a closer orbit during the system’s youth, and Centauri B Prime was caught in the path. These asteroids deposited platinum-group metals all around the surface of the planet, on top of which an extensive biosphere grew. With it, we built towering cities, great fusion reactors, and a second-generation colonization fleet. Dozens of worlds were born from just this one, humanity’s first true colony. And that was even before the planet saw the birth of Antessa Reilir, inventor of the faster-than-light Reilir Drive.
One would not be remiss in saying many of us would not be here if it had not been for Centauri B Prime. However, in the time you have been reading this, you may have noticed its one flaw: the cumbersome name. Clearly we need to consider coming up with a new label for this world, one that can be used easily in conversation without depreciating the value of the world to our history and our society over the centuries. We here at the International Astronomical Union have thought on the issue: we have considered the contributions that the people of the planet have made to our scientific understanding; we have noted the value of the planet’s own properties in advancing such fields as geology and life science; and we have acknowledged the quality of life that the world has afforded its inhabitants and those in need. The planet holds a special place in our hearts, and even after its star has torn it to pieces, we will be sure to remember it. It is for all these reasons that we propose changing its official name to Planet Hawking in our databases, to commemorate the scientist with a grand world, and to honor the world with the name of a great scientist. I think the Confederate citizens will agree that the two would get along quite well.
by submission | Mar 17, 2018 | Story |
Author: Michele Roger
I make the coffee in the French press like I do every morning. Then, I regret it by the time I reach the City Freezing Works. A doubled edged elixir, the coffee rouses me from my bed and then inspires uninhibited vomiting by the time I reach downtown. I can’t blame it all on the coffee. The Freezing Works is a place of immeasurable hope and devastating despair. I want to find him. Yet, I pray that I will never come face to face with his waxy stare.
As I walk the six blocks downtown, I think of myself at his age and the comics that consumed me. The technicolor, paper end of the world glowed with an intense inferno of nuclear devastation. Who could have predicted that the actual apocalypse would have been so silent, lethal? Plausible deniability enrobes governments in a blanket of stoicism while they all point the finger at one another. It doesn’t matter who released the virus-infused nanotechnology. Humanity is dying in new and confounded ways.
There is a sound of suction as I push open the doors. The one-time car factory is now another world encased in ice. A light precipitation falls gently like snow from the ceiling as I show my ID to the guard. While his movements confirm that he’s alive, this place, this frozen hell shows the toll it has taken on his soul. His eyes are as lifeless as the bodies inside. The sound of him flicking the switch makes my stomach lurch again. I swallow the juices erupting to the top of my throat and the water flooding my mouth. This factory that once built a shining city and carried a nation befittingly showcases its dead. Just like dolls, its citizen’s faces frozen in time.
Wrapping my arms around myself in an attempt to physically hold myself together, I enter the side conveyor labeled the children’s section. I tremble from cold and fear as I gaze into each little face. I want to brush back the tattered hair in their eyes. I want to tell them their mother is coming. I want to lie to them and say it will all be okay. One by one, I confirm none of the milky eyes that stare up at me resemble my own. A part of me exhales. He’s out there, hiding like a good boy.
At the end of the month, the factory will re-route the factory conveyor belt. The line will not return to the industrial freezer. Instead, the corpses will travel to the other end of the building where the City has installed an incinerator. I wonder when I too will join the line. Who will be left to claim me? What will the nano-bots feast upon when none of us are left?
by submission | Mar 16, 2018 | Story |
Author: Mina
It’s the lack of sleep that’s the worst. I can live with the brutal beatings, the agony of untreated broken bones, the drugs that fuck with your head, the insidious cold, the gnawing hunger, the burning thirst and the routine rape, but I would literally kill to sleep. We’ve all been trained in withstanding torture and interrogation techniques, but nothing really prepares you for not being allowed to sleep for six days straight.
And I hate feeling dirty. I know that’s the least of my worries, but it’s a symbol of everything I have been stripped of. Not just my freedom but also the smallest of dignities.
Only one of the five interrogators is into rape and I’m hoping he’ll be rotated in soon. My notion of time is rather sketchy, but they seem to do six-hour shifts. I’ve been able to read from him that rape is discouraged by his superiors, which is why he switches the monitors off when he wants to scratch that itch. I’ve been biding my time until I was able to sift the security access codes from the minds of our captors. I have them all now. I’m not normally this slow, but pain has a habit of getting in the way of your focus. And I’m very weak now. It needs to be soon or I won’t be able to see it through.
Yes! He’s been rotated in. We go through an hour of him slapping me around. I make sure to show the pain, as I know he gets off on it. I’m hoping he’ll soon be turned on enough to switch off his brain.
Ok. We’re there. He’s switching off the monitors and removing my restraints so that he has full access to my body. As he shoves me face first into the wall, I grasp the hand pulling my head back by my hair and rip into his mind.
His scream is most satisfying. I hold nothing back and within minutes he’s a jabbering wreck on the floor. He’ll be lucky if he ever remembers his own name.
For a moment, there are black spots in front of my eyes and I sway. No! I can’t pass out now. I punch the wall and the fresh pain cuts through the fog.
I reach out to the guard I sense on the other side of the wall and fry his circuits too. It takes me a bit longer this time.
God, my kingdom for a bed.
Stumbling to the door, I key in the code that slides it open. I take the guard’s weapon and do a shuffling run. I’ll be on their monitors now and even destroying them as I pass them (I got the schematics from the mind of one of the guards), I have to move as fast as I can.
I’ve used the last six days to also locate the minds of the three other survivors from our raiding party. Luckily, one is our pilot. I kill the guards and interrogators the old-fashioned way, with their own weapons.
Apart from the lead interrogator. I allow myself to enjoy his death too. I sweep through his mind like a wrecking ball in slow motion, letting him feel the collapse of his higher motor functions before I erase the rest of him.
His last coherent thought is “no, you can’t exist, you’re just a myth!”
by submission | Mar 15, 2018 | Story |
Author: Jules Jensen
Things are changing. The line in the sand is gone, washed away by changing tides that everyone saw coming but not this fast. In his eyes, I see the difference. I see the tech.
“You have no idea how good this feels.” He says, smiling, and I bite back the comment that he used to feel good all the time, and he doesn’t need the tech to do that. We used to have fun all the time until he started to obsess over the latest trend in self-augmentation.
He focuses on something in the distance, the lenses in his pupils narrowing in on something so far away that no normal person would be able to see it.
Actually, most normal people probably can see it, since I’m one of the only ones that didn’t think shoving tech into my eyeballs was considered an upgrade. He catches the look I have on my face, and suddenly he frowns.
“Don’t be all high and mighty. You have a hearing aid, don’t you? How is this any different?”
His words hang in the air. I think of losing most of my hearing as a teenager, and now that I’m in my thirties I finally did something about it and got the hearing aid. Did he feel the same way that I did when he got his lenses put in, the intense hit of emotion when I realized my life was going to be better?
“There was nothing wrong with your eyes,” I say finally, defiance and guilt battling for supremacy within me.
“People all over the world do lots of things to make themselves better. They go to school, they get training, they work out. This is just how I’m choosing to better myself.”
My contempt of the tech is starting to wane. He looks very unimpressed with me when I say nothing, and he walks off. We don’t see each other or talk for days, and I fear losing my friend, but I don’t have the guts to say sorry and make amends. A different kind of guilt gnaws at me, a curse that darkens my days and keeps me awake at night. I feel bad for not expressing how much I care and worry about him, for not saying sorry, and for not being more open-minded.
A week later, it happens. To this day, I’m not sure what started it. Some say solar flare, some say aliens, some say weapons testing, some even say it was divine intervention. I say it doesn’t matter; the outcome is the same.
People stumbling blind or deaf or not stumbling at all because they had tech in their spines to make them stronger and now its toast, cars not starting, radios broken, every piece of tech non-functioning and burnt up. I find the friend that stopped talking to me because of mutual ignorance, slumped in his home, cowering and crying. My hearing aid is gone, but my ear that can sort of hear on its own catches his shaky apologies. I feel guilty all over again, not because I had anything to do with the EMP blast that rocked the world, but because I wasn’t there for him when it happened.
I tell him that I’m sorry, that it’s okay, we‘ll get through this together and I’m there for him because this is what friends are for.
by submission | Mar 14, 2018 | Story |
Author: Henry Peter Gribbin
There is a young boy who lives all by himself in a meadow. For miles and miles, there is nothing but soft flowing grass which sways in a gentle breeze. In a small depression stands a tree, an apple tree. This tree plays an important part in the boy’s life. It provides him nourishment and shelter when a light misty rain falls. Other than the boy, the apple tree, and the flowing grass there is no other form of life. There are no birds, animals, insects and more importantly, no other form of human life.
There is a brick wall that runs as far as the eye can see in both directions. It reaches into the clouds. The young boy walks every day along the wall. One day he walks to the right-the next day to the left. He is searching for life, for he is lonely. But at dusk, he always returns to the tree. It is his only sanctuary.
The boy is being punished for the transgressions of his father. The boy is a prisoner.
There is a circular hole in the wall six inches in diameter and five feet off the ground. He has only recently been able to peek through the hole. He is amazed at what he can see. There are all kinds of trees, animals, birds, and in the distance there are mountains. He has no language and has no words to describe what he sees, but every day for hours he is enthralled by what is on the other side of the wall.
One day he heard sounds that he had never heard before. He went to the hole and observed a group of children about his age playing. The sounds he heard were the squeals of laughter. He watched but made no sound. One of the children came close to the wall to retrieve a ball. It was a young girl. The boy made no sound, but when the girl stood up something caught her eye. She came closer and put her eye right up to the hole. The boy and girl stared at each other for several minutes. The girl called to her friends. They took turns looking at the boy on the other side of the wall. Each one laughed at him. They laughed at his unkempt hair and his nakedness. Then they returned to their play. The girl stayed behind. She tried to talk to the boy but had no luck. Somehow she got the message across that she would return the next day.
Well, she did. She returned day after day, and she managed to teach him language. Her name was Grace, and since the boy had no name she called him Ash because of his fair skin and blond hair. The boy liked the name she gave him. For the first time, he had a friend. For months the boy and girl communicated. One day Ash reached his arm through the hole and touched Grace’s hand. It was the first time he had ever felt another’s touch. It felt wonderful.
The following day Grace and her friends did not appear. They did not return the following day either. The boy always waited by the hole in the wall, but after several more days passed he realized that he was alone again. The next morning he resumed his walks along the wall.
