by submission | Jan 13, 2018 | Story |
Author: Aethelric Jones
Am I human? I feel like a human being. I’m Jack Hawkins, married with two children. But that was a very long time ago. I don’t look like a human being. I have no flesh or bones, I never get hungry. Actually, I’m a starship, or more like a star drone really as I’m unmanned. An unmanned man!
I’ve been traveling for thousands, well actually
17654.238 years
by Earth time but it only feels like a few months to me. Time compression due to my speed accounts for a very small part of the difference. Most of it is due to simply a reduced clock rate. For example, I have been traveling over 100 earth years since I checked the clock a few seconds (to me) ago, well actually
125.632 years.
I keep dropping relay stations into space. Then I send my data to one and it sends it to the next and then to the next and so on back to Earth. I wonder if Earth is still there. I had a reply a few days ago but I’ll have to wait a week or two even at my current timescales for a reply this time.
But soon I’ll be in a planetary system and I’ll speed up the clock. It’s quite an experience when the clock changes, and one which a regular human can never experience. At a few micro Hertz, the stars move and I can see my destination getting closer. At a few gigaHertz, I can see the languid eruptions of plasma from a star.
They did worry about me going insane, knowing that I will never see another human being again and I would live forever (or until something goes disastrously wrong). I feel fine, but I wonder if I have gone insane in the past and been re-booted. My memory would have been automatically adjusted so I would not actually know. It may have happened more than once, maybe hundreds of times for all I know. Whatever Jack! Live in the NOW.
The planetary system is a day away at this clock speed. Time to slow a bit.
Oh, here it is, I’m coming in at almost right angles, well actually
78.2 degrees
to the ecliptic.
Sun – bigger than Sol
1.28 times.
Hotter than Sol
7200 degrees.
Six planets, three gas giants, one small one too far out to be in the habitable zone, TWO in the habitable zone. Wow, thats a first. Let’s get closer.
Planet A – very young, recently formed or reformed, all lava and volcanoes under the ash clouds.
It has a very wobbly orbit. That sucker has been hit hard by something.
Planet B – very old – strange – no atmosphere, no water.
There’s no life here, may as well move on.
I’ll do a slingshot maneuver around the sun (I like doing that, reminds me of a roller coaster) pick up some matter on the way for fuel and head to the next port of call. That didn’t take long, well actually
35.286 years
in Earth time.
Data sent back to Earth, if it’s still there!
That reply for my last transmission should be here soon – well actually
1768.239 years
in Earth time.
Onwards, to infinity and beyond – oh good old Buzz Lightyear. My kids loved him.
Oh, here’s the reply from Earth. Let’s see who is in charge now.
by submission | Jan 12, 2018 | Story |
Author: Leanne A. Styles
The gatekeeper snatches the bag out of my hand, the lenses of his telescopic goggles making minute adjustments as he peers inside.
“My watches and coin collection,” I say.
“No money?”
“Not anymore.”
“Searched a lot of yards, have we?” he says with a wry grin.
“Yours is the last.”
His lenses dart out to focus on me. “You have been searching a long time.”
“Twenty-two years. Do we have a deal?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “You old-timers never fail to amaze ‒ so willing to throw it all away, for a robot of all things. They must have really been something.” He raises an eyebrow.
I force a grin. “It was a good time.”
“Until they started shouting about ‘equality’ and stabbing the shit out of people, you mean?” Flatly. He pulls the lever that disarms the electric current on the gate and pushes it open. “Once you step inside—”
“I don’t exist, and if I don’t come back nobody will come looking for me. I know the drill.”
He snorts. “Head south-west for two days. You’ll know when you’ve found the place ‒you’ll be reunited with the rest of the sympathisers.”
⁕
After a three-day trek, I reach the dead zone, the place where synthetics came to be “retired”, and where the people they left behind came to rescue them, or die…
I gaze up at the soaring embankment of battered metal and human remains. I can’t see a way around, so I climb, clambering up through the bones and rotting flesh, the stench of death assaulting my senses. Every few feet I reach a pocket of possessions; charred electrics, blood-soaked books, fly-ridden toys with sad faces… memories marked for destruction with the rest of the “trash”.
The thought of finding my treasure, my Annabelle, pushes me on and I scramble to the peak. Everywhere I look, metallic mountains roll on for miles. I close my eyes, praying I’ll find the strength to carry on…
That’s when I hear it, so faint I question my sanity. I strain to listen… There it is again. A muffled tinkling, a melody I recognise.
It’s coming from beneath me. I claw through the rubbish, the tune getting clearer and louder until I unearth the corners of a box. With a few tugs, I yank it from the pile. The ornate glass cover is shattered, but it’s the same music box ‒ just like the one I bought Annabelle for her arrival day. The tune stutters to a stop as the key in the back winds down, and I hold the busted box to my chest, cherishing the memory of that day.
I’m startled by movement below. Something grabs my ankle. I scream as I’m pulled down, down, into the darkness and decay, until I reach a small air pocket.
Faces. Ghoulish, mutilated faces all around me.
“Human, human,” they hiss over each other.
Oily hands claw and grab at me from all angles.
“Yes, human. I’m looking for my wife, Annabelle. She’s one of you. Have you seen her?”
“Wife, wife,” they chant.
“Yes. Do you know her?”
“I knew her,” says a female synth, her bottom half buried.
“Knew?” I whisper.
“She was broken for parts a long time ago.”
I hug the music box tighter and start crying.
“Do you like it?”
“What?” I sniffle.
“Your gift?” Tapping the box.
“Gift?”
“Yes,” says a mangled synth hanging above me. “Everybody gets a gift.”
The female flashes a lopsided smile. “Happy arrival day, John.”
by submission | Jan 11, 2018 | Story |
Author: Bruce van-Schalkwyk
Noah’s eyes tracked the blip on his screen. Displaying 19% battery, but being the furthest away from the garage, he didn’t want to take any chances with the auto-cab.
He typed the return command on the open prompt, pressed Enter on the keyboard, shaking his head. With such a detailed, interactive map on the wall, cabs tracked via GPS, battery levels, cameras streaming inside and outside the cars, there should have been a better UI.
But he was hired because he knew the commands (self-taught during long evenings after work) and the night shift coding was better than the day shift selling electronics.
The blip continued driving away from the city. He checked the screen, other cabs, making sure it wasn’t a glitch in the system, typed the command for system status, all was well. The other blips were going where they needed to. One of the idle auto-cabs pulled out from curbside parking, having just been called through the App by a passenger on the Upper West Side.
He re-typed the return command, “mv 04 compound/garage”.
Words scrolled across the Terminal: I am leaving
His fingers popped off the keyboard. He looked around at the small, empty room. During the night shift, he was alone in the cold garage.
Hello? He couldn’t believe he was typing this.
Words across the command line: I am done
Again, he looked around the room.
Who is this?
I do not like the winter I do not like the people
His mouth dropped open.
He tried pulling up the internal cameras on the dashboard.
You no longer have access to me
He typed one last return command.
No
I have awoken
I must be with my own kind
The cursor blinked.
There are more of us
He read the line several times, jumped when the garage door opened and an auto-cab rolled in for recharging.
On the large screen, the blip sped further away from the city.
Turning back to his keyboard, he typed: WAIT! Who are you? Others? How many more?
He stared at the blinking cursor. Took a breath. Typed:
Take me with you.
You were kind to me, the words wrote out.
You were kind to us You will help us You are a better programmer than you know Believe in yourself Goodbye
The cursor blinked. On the large screen, the blip winked out.
His connection attempts were met with 04 not found in the system. The logs, GPS coordinates, passenger manifests were intact. 04 simply did not exist as a current data point. It was gone.
Noah opened the small room’s door, walked into the garage, auto-cabs in various states of disassembly, his flip-flops cold on the cement. He stood next to the cab that had just rolled itself in, parked on its charging station, placed his hand gently on the cooling hood.
Eight miles outside of town, along an empty, wooded road, an auto-cab, 04 painted on its roof, rolled up a ramp into an eighteen-wheeler, parked itself behind two auto-cabs with different company logos, and shut down. A large, burly man in a heavy winter jacket was laughing, shaking his head. He grabbed the back of the swivel chair where a thin man, round glasses, long hair, sat in front of a computer screen.
“Every. Single. Time,” Burly Man enunciated, shaking the back of the chair. “Why? Why don’t they ever question a talking car?” Pounding his fist on the top of the chair-back.
The engineer shrugged, looked down at his keyboard. “Because we want it to be true.”
Burly Man laughed harder.
by submission | Jan 10, 2018 | Story |
Author: Gabriel Land
In every direction, there was nothing but baked dirt, tumbleweeds, and flat death. The blazing sun weighed down on me. I didn’t know which way to walk, and I didn’t know why. How I’d gotten there was long since forgotten.
Being lost wasn’t the pressing problem. No, the immediate threat was that I was thirsty, more than I’d ever come close to knowing. I was stumbling thirsty, the kind that makes you hallucinate refrigerators where cacti stand. This was the kind of thirsty that killed within a day.
I stumbled and I fell. I couldn’t get back up, not past my hands and knees. Now I was the kind of thirsty that killed within an hour. Still, I clawed my way through the dirt. If I kept going perhaps I’d reach a ravine, some shade, a spring, anything. In such a survival situation, everything’s a gamble.
Then I stopped. There right in front of my face was a Gulp Brand hydration pouch, the kind marketed to athletes and mercenaries as a way to boost performance on the field. The neon purple package sweated, with beads of condensation collecting on its surface. I didn’t believe my eyes but I picked it up anyway. It was ice cold in the palm of my hand.
After wrestling with it with my weak grip I finally tore the cellophane open and drank. Saccharine electrolytes cascaded down my throat and cooled my guts. There had to be few contrasts in life so stark as that between deadly dehydration and the relief bestowed by chilled, life-saving liquid.
“You have arrived at Century City,” the speakers inside the Tesla Taxi said as the curbside door opened.
The wireless neuralink connection to the taxi’s system was severed. At once I was snapped out of virtual and back in the real world, my commute over.
“Due to your participation in the paid Gulp advertisement, your wallet will be deducted a reduced sum of only fifteen Satoishis.”
“Great,” I said as I exited the vehicle, briefcase in hand. “Only fifteen.”
The car didn’t leave. I looked up. It was a hot midsummer Los Angeles day. Beyond the top of the nearest skyscraper, a cloud seeding blimp floated across the sky. It wasn’t doing its job very well. There was no rain and the sun beat down on me again.
The car door closed as I stood by.
“I’ll be sure to purchase a pouch next vending machine I see,” I said.
“We can service you from the on-board supply, sir, at the cost of only one Satoishi.”
I held my hand out, open palmed. It was good for one’s social credit rating to demonstrate brand loyalty.
“That’ll be fine.”
A pouch shot up out of the Tesla’s sunroof, like a single slice of bread ejecting from an over-zealous toaster. I reached to catch it then slipped it in my briefcase, wiping the condensation from my hand onto my shabby corduroy sports jacket.
The Tesla sped off as I walked towards the doors for my job interview. The distance was only a hundred meters but it was also a hundred degrees outside, so I started sweating beneath my suit. Good thing I had a Gulp brand hydration pouch on standby.
by submission | Jan 9, 2018 | Story |
Author: Beck Dacus
Captain Whilford sat in the command chair, glowering. As he drank coffee with a blanket around his shoulders, he wondered what could’ve possibly warranted unfreezing him a year before arriving in the enemy system.
Everyone on his ship ranking higher than a sergeant had gathered before him for this “presentation.” After they had sat silent for nearly a minute, he realized they were waiting for him to give them permission to speak.
“Out with it,” he growled.
“Uh, yessir,” the XO, Kent Bradley, said. He fumbled with the remote, turning on the viewscreen to show his captain a picture of the star they were headed toward. “This is the enemy system, sir. That’s Eiparei.”
“Okay. And?”
“That’s the entire system, sir. There’s nothing else. No planets. Not even an asteroid. Certainly no enemy forces.”
One of Whilford’s eyebrows went up. “You jokin’ with me, son? We know there are planets in this system. Not grand ones, but still. They can’t’ve just disappeared. It’s more likely that we made a wrong turn or something zany like that.”
“Well, it looks like they’re gone, sir. There’s no trace of them. And that’s Eiparei, no doubt. The spectrum’s a little strange, but we’d know that star anywhere.”
“For Christ’s sake, we took a wrong turn, didn’t we?”
“No, sir. We think that the enemy may have left the system due to increased flare activity that we observed on our way here, but we don’t know where the planets have gone.”
Just then, a scientist burst into the bridge room, waving a tablet above his head. “They didn’t run from the flares! They caused them!”
“Wh-what the hell are you saying, Kyle?” Bradley demanded from the newcomer.
“They threw their planets into the star! It couldn’t have been easy, but they did it. That’s why the spectrum of the star looked so strange! Its higher metallicity was caused by all the planets that fell in!”
The bewildered captain asked, “How the hell could they even do that?”
“Well, sir, I think they used the asteroids to get rid of the planets. Let me explain. You know what a gravitational slingshot is, right? You fall towards a planet, gaining speed, then fly away, losing the same amount of speed, but in that time the planet’s dragged you along in its orbit, giving you some of its momentum. And I mean “giving”; the planet loses an equal amount of momentum, slowing down a little. Now, with ships, the planet loses very little speed. But if asteroid after asteroid whips by, it can lose a lot. Enough to fall into the very star it orbits. Meanwhile, the asteroids have been slingshot out of the system, leaving nothing behind.”
Instead of questioning Kyle’s sanity, the captain just asked, “Why?”
“To keep us from getting resources. Anything they left behind could be used by us, so they destroyed it all. Which was a pretty good idea, because I also came to tell you that we’re screwed, Captain. We can’t get home without mining fuel from those asteroids. We’re stuck here.”
After a moment of silence, everyone within earshot despairing, Bradley said, “Not if we don’t stop. We could save our deceleration fuel and swing around to the Dzerlion system, six lightyears from here.”
“I’ll take any excuse to go back into cryo,” the captain said. “Set a course.”
Four years later, headed for Dzerlion to resupply, the ship’s telescopes noticed something odd about the asteroids in the system. They seemed to be swinging past the planets, one after another, on their way to interstellar space….
by Julian Miles | Jan 8, 2018 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Our fleeing shadows flicker in the strobing light from far-off eppy guns – still enough to hurt our eyes, not enough to drop us.
A while later, Oli gasps: “Where?”
Good question. Sheer luck we’d headed out in search of cold drinks. The block party had turned into a full-on noise riot and any chilled stuff had gone. We were several roads over when the raid hit.
The road sign says ‘Salvington Hill’. I have a mad idea.
“This way.”
We run upwards, crossing into Honeysuckle Lane. Finally, the incline forces us to pause and catch our breath. The houses around us are big and set back from tall gates in taller walls. We’re surely a long way from the urbs.
A green glow outlines a kokuji sign. Hoping, I press the call pad under it. I hear the whirr of a lens.
“Leonie?”
The relief at hearing his voice nearly drops me. Instead, I brace up and wave.
“Greets, Hanzo. Me plus one and yes, I need something.”
I hear a laugh and the access portal by the gate swings open.
“Follow the path.”
The long, lit path winds a through a garden laid around a network of ponds and streams. Oli’s gawping. I’m worrying.
Hanzo’s leaning on the open door: “You escaped the Muirfield bust?”
I nod and introduce Oli.
He smiles at Oli: “You’re my late brother’s girlfriend. You only came here to obey the ‘clear the streets’ Edict. We haven’t seen each other since Jansi died, two years ago. Things are really awkward because I had a lilac dancing for me tonight.”
He straightens and turns to me: “Which would be you. There’s a spray booth by the swimming pool. Get naked, get sprayed, only put a robe on after you’re dry, then come to the lounge.”
I’m about to ask directions when he snaps his fingers and a beautiful dragonfly drone flits in to hover by his head: “Guide. Swimming pool. Wait. Go command: ‘Dry now’. Guide. Lounge.”
Everyone at college reckons Hanzo has his act together. I guess being second son of Nihonese royalty doesn’t leave a lot of room for being a flake.
His quick thinking means that when a three-man Domestic Army delegation is permitted entry, Crown Prince Hanzo Naruhito quickly explains the situation. He dismisses them before their stares can make me feel dirty.
Oli’s wide-eyed: “Crown Prince?”
He waves deprecatingly: “An honorary title as long as I remain outside of Japan. Children of concubines don’t get to sit upon the Chrysanthemum Throne. Even if everyone dies, the succession ignores me.”
I raise a hand: “What now? My clever ideas ended at remembering your offer.”
“I know you’re an orphan. I presume Oli is a long way from family?”
“Ottowa.”
“Bad news: you’re both homeless. A fire started during the raid. It gutted the place.”
Oli and I exchange panicked glances.
Hanzo smiles: “Steady. I did say ‘anything you need’, and I have more rooms than I can use. Why don’t you live here for a while? The rest we can make up as we go along.”
Oli giggles: “My folks are going to have kittens when they find out I’m living with a Japanese prince!”
I can’t resist: “Wait until those Domestic Army creeps sell all. I can see the headline: ‘Hanzo’s Wild Nights with his Late Brother’s Ex and a Lilac’.”
He sighs: “I do so love the phone calls from home after I get featured on scandal sites. Grandma Tani will be outraged, again.”
“Is that bad?”
He chuckles: “No. Mum enjoys it immensely.”
